LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf ...©A. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



FLIP-FLHP-TRTTOO 



-OF- 



DADDY DEyiLTHRESHER'S 

FLffilL-FLINGS. % , ^^ 

V ■ 




nn''J 



HEW YORK, 
1889. 



> 






Enterofl acconling tp Act of CoiiL'ress, in the year 18^!', by 

R. F. J. BOSTELMANN 

ill the Office of the Libraiiaii of Congress, at '\Vasliiii','tou, D. C. 



L. BISWURM & CO., PHiKTEnS; i?f & 127 Park Row. N- Y. 



4 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I'leaiuble ......... 7 

Common Tenets of all Chiistiivn (lommunities . . 8 

Lord's Prayer ........ 13 

Commandments ....... 14 

Truth 16 

Work 21 

Crod 26 

Love . . . . . . . , . . 30 

Mun 32 

Knowledge and Faith 38 

Evolution. Realism the base and goal of Materialism 

and Idealism . . . . . ... 40 

Freedom 43 

Daisies, Pansies and Heatberbells. 

Brotherlove 49 

My Sanctuary 50 

Peace . .51 



I'AGK 

Autumnal Parting 52 

Kaiubow ......... 53 

Spring ......... 53 

Maylily and Daisy 54' 

Violet 5.1 

Broken Ring 55 

Good Night 5H 

To Meet again 57 

Huntsman's Farewell 58 

My Heart afloat SU 

Jolly Fiddler 60 

Boozer's Precaution . 62 

Banner-Guard 63 

Brave Old Trooper to his Cloak 64 

Thirty Three Maxims in Minims . . . 65—71 

Cheer for incipient little Scholar 72 

Hobby-Horse 72 

English Drummer-Boy 73 

Sun of Austerlit z 73 

Portsmouth 75 

On the Fly-Leaf of Thom!i.s Moore's Irish Melodies . 77 

Aunt Betsey 77 

Death 79 

Lines of Comfort 80 

Exile . 80 

Farewell 81 

Laird Duncan Rosse . 82 



Vagk 
Godfrey 81 

(Jradle of EnglancVs Royalty 98 

A Memorable Fight . . . • . . . .123 

Concerning Strikes 135 

Cure of Uncle Sam's Chronic Ailments .... 130 

Letters 1-iS 

The Cruel Mugwump's Campaign-Song 1888 . . 166 

Epitaph IBS 



Nobody will dispnle that the only real blessings o 
civilization spring from Eeligion and that all the manifold 
grievances that daily disturb the peaceful enjoyment of 
civilization's blessings, are the natural consequence of 
absolute or pretended irreligion. 

If we sincerely wish to secure oiir own happiness, as 
well as the happin&ss of all our near and dear ones around 
us, we have to foster in their hearts the divine inborn germ 
of religion. Love. Love and religion are one ; without love 
there is no religion, without religion no love. These two 
are one like spirit and body, one like thought and speech. 

Does wealth secure happiness ? Does health secure itV 
Happiness and welfare cannot be secured without religion. 
Why, then, disregard, despise and slander religion? 

Let every man cherish the religious Creed he was born 
and bred to, as long as he feels that it is the source of his 
own happiness and the hai^piness of all fellow-beings around 
him. Of all religious creeds Christianity pure and simple is 
the only one that is nothing but love and, therefore, has 
proven to be not only the most jjowerful promoter of 
civilization, but also the surest means for securing thy own 
happiness as well as the happiness of every-body else. 

All the contents of this collection of stray leaves sprang 
from that conviction, and having been trusty land-marks of 
my self -education never failed to preserve my equanimity 
and perfect happiness even under most trying vicissitudes of 
an eventful though humble life. How coiild I fail to shape 
my course in the ediacation of my own children by these 
land-marks, and why should'nt I wish that they may serve 
the same purpose to others who fain would fortify themselves 
or their children against the direst trials and miseries of 
life? 



Tliere is a God : thus ^iraising round about, 
The works of Thy (aeation ever shout, 
And in Thy Holy Scriptures hast Thou, Lord, 
Eeveal'd to us Thy own pure sacred word. 
God is a spirit and, through earth and sky, 
Of all the spirit-beings the most-high. 
There only is one God, whose unity 
In trinity reveals itself to thee. 
Therefore, worshiji, adore and praise alone 
God Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as one. 
Coiupaie: Hebrews III, 4.— Romans I, 19, 20.-- John IV, 24.— Psalm 

CXLV, 3, 10.— Deuteronomy VI, 4.-1 Corinthians VIII, 4.— Matthew 

XXVIII, 19. 



By God the universe was made withal. 

Angels as well as matter's atoms small, 

God rules supreme and doth preserve the course 

And very existence of the universe. 

This government, active without susjtense, 

We call God's everlasting Providence. 

Compare: llelrews I, 14.— Genesis 1,1. — Hebrews I, 3. — 1 ChronicloH 
XXX, 11, 12. 



In His own image God created man, 

In God's own image mankind's course began. 
Into the lifeless form of dust God blew 
His breath of Life as breathing spirit too. 



Eternal bliss and immortality 
Were to be man's by God's loving decree. 
But man, alas ! was soon beguil'd to sin 
Against the fountain of bis origin, 
Thus to forego the joys of innocence, 
His Eden, for the pangs of Death's dire dens. 
Alas ! We are, since our tirst parents' fall. 
Born to be sin's vile slaves and subjects all. 
Say, who can boast that never he did break 

The laws that God ordain'd for man's own sake? 

The sin that thou involuntarily 

Inheritedst, is multiplied by thee. 

Though honestly we may strive to commit 

No sin, we may omit what should be done, 

And if we evil doings do permit, 

It's just as sinful as if self-begun. 

But God's sure punishments will never miss 

The sinner's future life as well as this. 

Ci.iiipttiv; Genesis I, J?. 11,7. Ill — 1. Jolin 111, 4, (i.— Koinai.s VII, 
IS, III, -.(I. rsalm LI, 5.— James IV. 17.— KdiiKius I, IS. 



Thus man fell into crime and misery — 

Say, who can save him from sin's drowning sea? 

Say, who but God's own true-begotten son 

Can free the slaves of sin ? — and it is done : 

Behold ! Christ Jesus left His Father's throne 

And comes to call us brothers of His own; 

So man as God in veriest union, He 

liedeems Sin's bonded slaves to liberty. 

By direst sufferings, yea, by Death's worst pang 

He frees us from our debt and clears our wrong. 

Thus for our numberless iniquities 

He gives His own life as sacrifice ; 

He lights the dar^iuess of our erring mind 

By teachings with His spirit's gift combined, 



10 

And shows, by His example, lis the road 
To godliness and Eden's lost abode, 
When we have truly born ourselves anew 
Into God's image and God's presence too. 
• onipare: 1 Timothy 1, 15.— Jolin I, 2it.— 2 Corinth. V, Ui.— -lohii Xl! 
4(J, and XV, 26, and III, H. 



The Holy Ghost acts through the powers lent 

By God's own word, and through the Sacrament 

As well as through the fate in man's own life. 

Man's Avill that cannot by itself arrive 

To godliness, is ripen'd evermost 

For true repentance by the Holy Ghost. 

As soon as truly we repent our sin, 

We surely may God's grace and mercy win, 

If we believe in Christ, as for His sake 

Repentant sinners shall forgiveness wake, 

And thus redeem'd to grace, and justified, 

Holy and blest behold God's sacred light. 

Compare: Philipp. II, 13,— Acts III, 19.— Mark 1, 15.— Gnlat. V, 6.- 
Ephee. II. 8, 9. 



After our body hath to death declin'd. 

We're surely for another life destin'd ; 
Immortal is our spirit that God gave. 
The body, too, shall once from it's dark grave 
By Christ be rais'd on that grand day when He 
Will, for all mankind's judgment, take His see, 
To separate the wicked from the freed. 
These He will take into His loving heed 
Adorn'd with heavenly crown -and those will be 
Banish 'd into eternal misery. 

Compare: Ecclesiast. XII, '.—John V, 28, 2!l.— 2 Coriiitli. \', UK- 
Luke XVI, 2t).— Matthew, XXV, 4«. 



11 

Litve, true love be the fountain to supply 

Thy duties toward God, tlie Lord most-high, 
Towards thyself and towards thy neighbor too. 
Love to thy Maker gives thee trust that true, 
Gives reverence, holy fear and the desire 
By prayers to keep aglow thy heart's pure fire ; 
Love to thy neighbor makes thee just and true, 
Meek, lowly, pitiful, tit to pursue 
The path of real virtues that adorn 
God's children when in Christ they're newly born. 
Compare: Matthew XXII, 37. 38, 39.— Psalm XXXVII, 5.— Geuesi.i 

XXXIX, 9.— 1 Corinth. XIII, 5, (i.— Philipp. II, 3.— Matthew XI, 29.— 

I Pct<T III, 8.— Psahii XCV, (i. 



Two Sacraments we've got by which alway 
God in His love and wisdom doth display 
The mercies of His throne : Baptism the one, 
The other the Holy Supjjer of His Son. 

Sa(!red Baiitism was by our Lord ordain'd, 
To join us to His flock, so that we gain'd 
The blessed childship of His Father, and 
The heirloom of His Kingdom's promis'd land. 
If we don't stubbornly fail to perform 
The sacred duties of His blessed norm 
Which by it's firm baptismal covenant, 
Christ's Church on all it's members doth implant. 

The last night ere He suffer'd for our sin 
And on the Cross His victory did win, 
Hath Christ ordain'd that His followers shall 
Convene to His Last Supper's festival. 
Thou worthily partakest of His meal 
When thy repentance true, when true thy zeal 
For reformation from iniquity, 
True thy desire for God's kind mercy be. 
But, woe to everyone who dares partake 
Ere he has vow'd with sin's dark ways to break ! 



12 



Exiimiue, tlieieforo, well thy heart before, 
Bwt while receiving it, remind the more 
Grateful thyself of Jesus love, and strive 
Thereafter everuiore to shape thy life 
By His exMinple and to walk the ways 
That Jesus for His followers did trace. 

Dinpaie: Mattlnw XXVIII. lii.— Mark XVI, 16.— 1. Coiintli. XI. •27,',^S.— 
Pliilipp II, :.. 



13 



I^orcVs Prayer. 



Father in heaven ! We pray : 
Hallow'd be ever Thy name. Oh, enliven 
In us Thy Kingdom, let as in Heaven 
Thy will be done here on earth all-way — 

Father in heaven, we pray. 

Father in heaven, we pray : 
Give us our daily bread, oh ! and forgive us 
Our sins as we may forgive them who give us 
Troubl' and who trespass across our way — 

Father in heaven, we pray ! 

Father in heaven, we pray : 
Lead us not into temptation; deliver 
Us from all evil, for Thine is for ever 
Glory and Kingdom and boundless sway. 

Father in heaven, we pray ! 



14 



The Coiiiiiiaiitliiieiitj^. 



Thou shalt have none other god but lue ; 
Thou shalt never worship Matter, 
Works of My Creation's realm, like thee. 
For, with chastisement I'll visit ever 
All who contravene me, but will spare 
Them who childlike my mandates revere. 



Never shalt thou take my name in vaiu. 
Never desecrate the purity 
Of my holy truth, nor show disdain 
Of whatever appertains to me. 
Thus remember that my sabbath-days 
Be kept holy by thy folk always. 



Honor thou thy father, honor thy 
Mother, too, and mind my promise-word 
That thy days on earth may last to high 
Age within the land that I, the Lord 
Will grant them who duly honor their 
Parents while I here their lives spare. 



Thou shalt neither murder nor commit 
Anywise adulterj', nor steal, 
Neither bear faLse witness nor beget 
Slander 'gainst thy neighbor whose true wi 
Ever shall be thy cure, lost thou do not 
Hvirt nor harm nor covet what he's got. 



J5 



"These are my Commandments, this my will,' 
Si)oke in thunder's voice our all-just Lord, 
•'Who shall break or shall fail to fulfil 
One of them, will feel his deeds abhorr'd, 
AVill condemn'd by his own conscience tiy 
From my bliss into the abyss of lie. 



To fulfil these laws we all shall prove 
Powerless unless through oiir life's length 
The only impulse w'e obey, be Love. 
Thus, with all thy heart and all thy strength 
Love the Lord, thy God, through all thy days, 
Love thy neighbor as thyself always. 



16 



T R L T H. 

Tljpre's but one omnipresent oneliood— TrntL. 
Oumi.scieut, omnipotent and eternal. 
Notliing, whatever, does exist, forsooth ! 
Unless it does exist in truth. This kernel 
And veriest germ of wisdom is it's own 
Full proof tliat never i-an be overthrown. 

Concrete, practical, active truth is Kiiiht, 
Truth crown'd with victory's palm, is Liberty ; 
Embodied truth is the all-pervading Light, 
Revealed truth Love in its purity. 
Kight, Liberty, Light, Love must be our aim. 
If in and from Truth we existence claim. 

Truth, by the never to be broken chain 
Of Cause and of Effect creates and, aye, 
Preserves the Universe and wields the reign 
Of everything that is, with even sway. 
Therefore, nothing should cause us e'er to rove 
From Truth — or liight. Light, Liberty and Love. 

The world of matter. Nature, is to be 
i-'frceiv'd alone by our material senses. 
The world of Mind which we term History 
Or Spirit-world, or world without suspenses. 
Can't be jje>-ceiv'd, but must be conceiv'd, brought 
To Mind by our inliuite sense, by Thought. 

There's one connecting link betwen our mind 
Or ivfinile rowceiving sense and our 
Finite jsfrceiving senses. Thou wilt find 
Both more or less subject to thy Will-power. 
Our Will design'd to be their mutual page 
Too often does as their sole desj^ot rage. 



17 



To keep the power of Will under control 
And unrelenting mastery of our mind 
Should ever be man's all-important goal, 
Lest he renounce the privilege of his kind. 
This absolute control and mastery 
Of f>ur free will we call Morality. 

With unimpair'd morality alone 
We can seciire our happiness, that is 
Our unison with Truth and all its own 
Creative power and universal bliss. 
Then we behold the moral world unfurl'd 
Within the Sijirit-World and Matter's world. 

Oar human mind's worship of Truth we term 
lieligion; mind's search after unreveal'd 
Truth, and mind's contemplation — from its germ 
To its unbounded scope — of Truth reveal'd : 
Philosophy. No man should shun the duty 
To worship Truth and realize its beauty. 

Conscience we call the eternal tendency 
Of Mind to constant identification 
With Truth ; Mind's unimpairable fealty 
To Truth and to its perfect domination 
Virtue. Virtue and Honesty are one, 
Are the only essence qualifying man. 

Of countless hues we do behold the rays 
Of sun-like Truth. Virtues are Honesty 
Ting'd with one of these different displays 
Of light, children of Truth. Where ever we see 
Or think to see virtues without this one 
Main-spring of Virtue, Honesty, — there's none. 



Ask, and it shall l)e given you ; seek, 
and ye shall Hud ; knock, and it schall V)« 
opened unto yoii. 

Matthew VII. 7. 



21 



"In the sweat of tliy brow tliou sbalt eat thy bread 
all the clays of thy life" — this was God's incommutable 
sentence when man was banished from the Paradise 
Ihat he had forfeited and recklessly thrown-away for 
the mere satisfaction of his own free will. From Adam 
down to the youngest schoolboy of our days we human 
beings always have looked-up to this stern sentence of the 
Most-High as to a down-right curse — yea, as to the— next 
to death — worst curse oppressing mankind. Do not most 
people call Death, in comparison with the unavoidably 
ceaseless toil of this sublunar life, the lesser evil? Do not 
we, at the closing grave of some deceased friend, often 
devoutly listen to phrases uttered even bj^ men who pretend 
to be your teachers and only legitimate interpreters for the 
treasures of super-human wisdom — phrases like these: 
"Blest is our deceased brother being for ever delivered now 
from all earthly toil and trouble !" — or, "Death finally has 
pitied the poor forsaken and wornout pilgrim and has 
released him from the oppressive toil that by our forefather's 
sin life is cursed with !" — and any amount of suchlike 
necrological cant? 

Does not thus man, in his queer delusion, seem fully to 
forget that the almighty architect of the universe cannot be 
culpable of ciu'sing? His justice may compel him to 
punish — his love, not any less forcibly and unconditionally, 
compels him to bless — to bless even in and by his punish- 
ments. Absolute and boundless is not only the great prim- 
ordial spirit's justice, but likewise his charity and everlasting 
love. 

Oh ! Thou eternal Spirit of the Universe, thou canst not 
cui'se, canst — even where thou art bound to chastise — not 
curse ; thou canst but bless in all eternity ! And if man think 
the imaginary toil of this life be a curse, thy curse, all-loving 
father, he shamefully belies himself. Indeed ! It is not Thy 



22 

curse— it is the cm-se of his own blind delusion what makes 
him hate his day's-work as a curse. 

Just look for once, oh man ! on labor as on a bliss — for 
that's what in reality labor ever was and will be— and oh! 
do always teach thy children, too, from their very first days 
of uncomipted childhood, to look on labor and activity in 
that light and to call its inevitable necessity a bliss —and 
thou wilt soon be convinced that of all prejudices which 
darken the poor earthly pilgrim's path through life, this is 
the oldest, the widest spread and the deepest rooted, the 
most foolish de<!idedly and, just on that account, the worst 
of all pernicious prejudices : to call the blessed compulsion 
to ceaseless labor and activity a curse inflicted on mankind. 

For once, oh man! lift thy eyes to the eternal roundfling 
of endless worlds, or dip thy looks with searching soundings 
into the innermost bosom of our mother Earth where, in the 
perpetual change of matter, Nature always renews its j'outh 
and thus eternally afresh creates itself into renewed 
existence: follow with the quick flight of thy loftiest thoughts 
the everlasting n.tation of ocean-tides and changing seasons 
or the never-halting onmarch of History: yea, turn thy looks 
or send the lightning flashes of thy reasoning mind where 
ever thou wilt, and everywhere, indeed, will everything con- 
vince thee with unshakable proof that the Spirit who does 
reveal himself as the One and only God throughout all space 
and time, throughout all Universe, not only was at work 
whilst He created— nay, that He never can have rested since 
and this very day must be and is incessantly at work if 
merely to preserve. Yea, the most prominent solvers of 
Nature's mysteries discovered, proved and exultingly pro- 
claimed to all mankind: "Creation, by no means, is to be 
considered as concluded and closed; Creation never ceases 
nor ever will cease going on, never will be found discontinu- 
ing. " 

Creation, indeed, is in reality the eternal work of the 
primordial Arch-spirit of the universe, and the state of ever- 
lasting bliss and felicity our imagination clothes Him with, 
is the mere natural result of just this His never interrupted 
work and activity. 



23 

Kight, Truth, Order (the laws of Nature) these three are 
the "Word", the "A and O" of St. John, are the life, are the 
very spirit of the universe. The never-at-rest rule of eternal 
Justice and Love is this primordial arch-spirit's work, and 
this his everlasting activity cannot but be the sure and only 
foundation and never-failing source of his eternal bliss. 

Why then wouldst thou, oh man ! in blind prejudice and 
utter imbecility brand the necessity of labor, this veriest 
source of happiness and bliss, by foolishly representing it 
as a curse — yea, as the original hereditary curse of all man- 
kind? — Oh! Thou misled mankind, recognise activity at least 
for what in reality it is: — That is the road, the onlj' true road 
to Salvation and Redemption — is the only true second birth 
whereby to secure afresh the image of, that is the likeness 
and relationship, the blessed childship to the Most-High 
which we lost, nay, which we fooled ourselves out of and 
still, every day, fool ourselves out-of afresh. 

Just this prejudice that Labor be the curse of mankind, 
is the fall of man, the continued, the daily relapsed-into, the 
very fall of man by that God's image was blurred and lost 
and every day is being lost again. 

He who does not call work a curse and acknowledges 
work to be what really it is— a blessing, yea, the very bles- 
sing of this frail life — ^he, surely, will through all life's joys 
and troubles always preserve his equanimity and will, in- 
deed, feel as happy as anj^-one may feel in this his earthly 
life. The comfort that in immediate sequence will surely 
impart itself by the sheer activity to the worker, outweighs 
in purity and unshaken intensity and strength not only all 
other enjoyments of this life, but is, beyond doubt, the 
genuine and only true enjoyment that we may expect to 
possess us of in this life's duration. 

It easily is proven that all the manifold so-called enjo}'- 
ments of this sublunar world iiltimately are nothing but 
sensual, imaginary feats. Without some serious penalty 
thou canst enjoy not a single one of all these so-called en- 
joyments. Are not always the "blues" with their whip of 
dull horrors at the heels of everj' one of the reveler's rank 
debauches? Does not every sport or even every artistic 



24 

enjoyment of whatsoever kind without fail generate the un- 
easiness of spiritnal enervation? Who can name me one single 
enjoyment that we afterwards have not always dearly and 
with usmioiis interest to pay for by remorse, disgust and 
surfeit or with some disturbance of our bodily or mental 
health? 

Does not the ancient rule -which enjoins temperance in 
all enjoyments, clearly prove that man more than thousands 
of years ago as well as to day, was never denying but always 
acknowledged as an indisputable fact and as truth, that the 
motley crowd of these imaginary enjoyments and recreations 
in reality is nothing but a variety of poisonous spices that 
stimulate the senses and only succeed in their temptation by 
some subtle flavor or enticing taste? 

Even if the moderate use of such poisonous stimulants 
hurt us but little and in its injuring consequences almost 
defj' detection — it never can do us any good. If these eiTO- 
neously so-called enjoyments, indeed, were harmless, they cer- 
tainly would remain harmless even when partaken of in large 
doses, and if they were wholesome, they surely would, the 
more freely they were indulged-in, in the same ratio prove 
more beneficial. 

And nevertheless we follow and obey the highly praised 
and daily, over and over, reiterated rule of careful and strict 
moderation in our enjoj'ments. There is but one truly legit- 
imate enjoyment in this world — the enjoyment of work and 
activity, This enjoyment does never revenge itself by ener- 
vation, surfeit or disgust — this enjoyment does even reward us 
by the sentiments of the highest satisfaction that we are ca- 
pable of realizing, does reward us where our body is wearied 
down and tired, by a slumber as sweet as nobody dai'e ex- 
pect to sleep who hunts for the imaginary so-called enjoj'- 
ments, sports and sensations, and shuns activity. 

Oh! compare the serene mirth, the satisfaction and the 
comfort, which the faithful lalwrer every blessed night 
brings along with hiiji from his day's work into his hapjjy 
home, compare them with the undescribably queer humors 
that yonder fellow concludes his fashionably spent day with 
wasting time and wits in sports or exclusively in mad hunts 



25 

after so-called enjoyments, even after tbe so-called biglier 
and nobler enjoyments of the '-refined" mob. Then thou, 
surely, wou'nt for a minute doubt or fail to discern where 
blessing and where curse, where enjoyment— yea, where 
felicity and delight is, and where only the poisonous spice of 
mere imaginary enjoyment and corrupting sensation— then 
thou wilt perceive and no longer disown that it is nothing 
but prejudice and blind delusion to call the necessity of 
work a curse, then thou wilt convince thyself that the curse 
does not consist in the necessity of labor, but just in the 
morbid prejudice whereby man looks on labor as on a 
curse . 

There is, besides, a vast difference indeed, whether we 
do our task merely for duty's sake and arguing that in the 
general strife for existence, it is the safer way to work, or 
whether we do work for the sake of the pleasure that activity 
by its own intrinsic nature does bear us, and that we only 
are able to realize by experience. 

Again there is a vast difference whether we do work de- 
K})ite of the prejudice that labor be mankind's curse, or 
whether we do work in the joyful conviction, that labor is 
mankind's veriest blessing. Even the very same work 
wou'nt be the same to us, whether we perform it under that 
cursed prejudice or under this conviction. The same piece 
of work which, perhaps, threatens to smother him who has 
to drag the fetters of yon prejudice, will be heartily wel- 
comed as a god-sent blessing to him who succeeded to ac- 
quire the right perception of what labor really is. 

Therefore it is every man's duty to mail his own heart 
and the hearts of all whom he calls his own beloved ones, 
against the pernicious prejudice that the necessity of labor 
be a plague inseparably conjoint with this life, by the con- 
viction that labor is the only pure enjoyment and the very 
bliss of this life; that by work, and by work only, we may 
realize otir second birth to the re-attainment of God's image, 
we may and successfully shall penetrate to the light of 
Truth and to the lost Eden — to the eternal East. 



26 

To answer (he qiiostion "Who is God?" I dare not 
undertake it. This (jnestion the solution whereof has al- 
ways in vain been tried and always afresh, without anything; 
like general satisfaction, is being trii^d over again by the 
wisest men and keenest thinkers of all nations and of all 
ages, this question never will be answered by the hiimau 
nimd, this question must forever remain a problem un- 
solved by man. 

Man, hardly able to cope with the Pythian command, 
"Learn to know thyself", cannot expect ever to succeed t<> 
know God. But quite another thing is it to answer the 
question "Who is thy God?" and this question not only 
ought distinctlj', exhaustively and conscientiously be an- 
swered by everj' one of its to himself, but we even should 
heartily welcome every opportunity, by words and acts to 
testify "Who our God be". 

The plain and clear answer to this question "who is thy 
God?" — and indeed, nothing else— is just what coins every 
single human being with the stamp of his individuality. 

Whosoever cowardly shuns to answer this question 
"Who is thy God?" — though now-a-days the number of such 
cowards may be found to form an overwhelming majority — he 
represents among his fellow-men about the same part that 
among the genuine and lawful coins of civilized nations, 
would be represented by toy counters, brass-, or tin-tokens, 
yes, criminal counterfeit imitations which lack ail and eveiy 
kind of intrinsic value. But him who knows and rejoic- 
ingly professes his God in all his sayings and doings, — him 
thou mayest compare to some genuine, sterling gold-coin 
the nominal value whereof will be indicated by its inscrip- 
tion and never will be found out of proportion with its in- 
trinsic value. 

And dost thou question me, who my God be, I answer 
"The eternal Arch-power is my God to whom the Universe 
owes its existence as well as its preservation, my God is the 
primordial sphit who inhabits every particle of the Universe 
as its veriest life." 

Who dares to disavow the existence of such a spirit? 
Why dost thou deem the existence of such a spirit less com- 



27 

jirehensible, for instance, than the existence of thy own sjiirit ? 
Who ever dares to deny the existence of tliis universal prim- 
ordial spirit, of this eternal arch-power, he likewise denies 
the existence of his own si^irit. Even blind or deaf and dumb 
born human beings may find means to get aware of and re- 
alize the existence of their own spirit and in natiiral se- 
quence become conscions, too, of the existence of an al- 
mightj^ and all prevading spirit of the Universe. 

Here I cannot refrain to remind you of an abuse pre. 
vailing in all languages, and particularly in the Germanic, 
caused not ^o much by the phraseology of eminent thinkers 
as by the preaching of the Clergy and much of the rhyming 
of the hymn-poets. In using the word "spirit" I could not 
but mention the nonsentical confusion which with all, even 
with the better educated classes, for generations has pre- 
vailed in regard to the meaning and significance of such 
highly imj^ortant conceptions: as spirit, ghost, soul, mind, 
heart, reason, intellect, etc. 

Whenever some enraptured hymn-manufacturer has to 
rhyme "spirit" to "roll," "hole" or "pole," he unreservedly 
substitutes the word "soul" for "spirit," and in similar cases 
of emergency "mind, heart, mood" and many expressions, 
which all have a distinct and even contradictory definition. 
Owing to this worse than Babylonian confusion, and to pre- 
vent being misunderstood or misinterpreted, a definition of 
the word "spirit" may here not be found out of its proper 
place. 

Here, then, the word "spirit" may be understood to 
signify a being, gifted with self-cousciousnesa and free will, 
absolutely imcorporeal (bodiless), although revealing itself 
as substantially independent by power and effect of action 
and not only distinctly different from matter, but matter's 
direct antithesis. 

This definition of the word "spirit" will suffice not 
only to give us the right conception of the spirit of man, but, 
likewise, enable us to understand the answer that in the 
outset was given unto the question "who is thy God?" 

The eternal primordial power is my God whereto the 
Universe owes it's existence and preservation; my God is 



28 

the spirit who inhabits even' particle of the nniverse, as its 
vital essence — whether we call this spijit God, Lord, Allah, 
Providence, Father, or Jehovah, or Order, Right and Trtith, 
or Word. But never call Him chance, for the fool whose 
sole God is chance, will very soon by chance — by his own 
god chance- be brought to chance's dire grief. I prefer to 
ciill my God "Order, Right and Truth," primordial spirit, 
All-Father and Almighty Architect of the universe. Bat I, 
really, am not able to understand what kind of a being 
people may or can conceive, fear, love and worship as 
Chance. 

Fools even think they are wise Avben they imagine that 
they have learnt, in singular occurrences or passing events 
which either further or check the designs of their selfish- 
ness, to trace the relation between cause and effect: and for 
the wise man chance is a phantom or unknown something, 
because he, generally verj' soon, will apprehend this ever- 
present relation between cause and effect in most of the 
events which take place within the limits of his cognizance, 
and therefore will, even where he fails to disclose this 
relation at the first glance, nevertheless presuppose it as 
undispiitably existent. 

Where the wise man in witnessing remarkable effects 
traces out their causes, he officiates as investigator, but as 
prophet where in witnessing remarkable causes he foresees 
and foretells the effects which eminrieally are sure conse- 
quences of such causes. A similar relation as the prophet's 
to the investigator's, is the relation between belief and 
knowledge. The wisest of men must believe in many a thing 
that, even he, during his earthly existence, hampered by his 
material senses, never dare expect to expound and thus to 
know. Yea, he absolutely must believe in all mal ters the 
existence whei'eof he is convinced of, even if this existence 
is able to escape the perception by his sensuous faculties. 

Must not the fool "believe" in the existence of his own 
reason when he endeavours to refute the wise man's asser- 
tion maintaining the actiial existence of man's reason as an 
undisputable something? If the fool want to argue against 
the existence of such a thing as reason on the ground that 



29 

neither be nor anybody else ever bas seen, beard, smelt, 
tasted or felt sucb a tbing as reason, be by bis lack of sound 
judgment quite overlooks that even he himself by this vei-y 
argument proves the existence of reason, because to prove 
bis antithesis he must -even unconsciously — use syllogisms 
that, seemingly at least, are founded on and consistent with 
reason; and this would be impossible without the existence 
of Reason. 

Just his being, by his own powers of reason — though 
weak they are - seemingly enabled to demonstrate the non- 
existence of said powers of reason, he himself, just by his 
own "smart" demonstration, renders the most decisive proof 
"ad oculos" of their existence even in a fool. 

And just so, the Atbei&t, perhaps, may with the fool's 
dialectical dexterity not less vaingloriously think to prove 
the non-existence of God, when he demonstrates that for him 
there is no God existent. He never will be able to prove 
that there is no Order in Nature, no eternal Eight and Truth 
in the life of man and the march of History. And the 
supreme rule of these eternally immutable Three, the rule of 
Order, Eight and Truth is one rule, is the rule of God, is 
God's everlasting work. 

All of us witness this perpetual rule in the imiverse and 
we call it, according to the object it reveals itself by, in 
nature Order, in the human life and in the history of man- 
kind Eight and Truth. We, therefore, have to acknowledge 
the existence of His rule and kingdom and, nevertheless, 
would try to deny His own existence, the existence of a 
most-high God and Master, the existence of an eternal arch- 
spirit, of an omnipotent and omnipresent Architect of the 
Universe? Who would be able to do it? 

Thus I rejoicingly profess: Order, Eight and Truth are 
One and the identifying manifestation of this vei'itable omni- 
potent Architect and Conservator of the Universe, are to me 
like my God, until I shall be convinced of some better 
truth when once I shall be given more — perbajis full light. 

"There is a God!" Thus shout for evermore the count- 
less creations of his activity throughout the universe. The 
traces of his rule cannot but be acknowledged by us wherever 



30 

our eye scarchingly may turn, (rod is a spirit, and God is 
of all spirits the sole fountain, the supreme master, the 
most-high. 

Riglit, Truth and Order, you are one — you are one vdth 
the All-Spirit, you iire God in all eternity! And as Wisdom 
always is tracing Truth, and as true Strength always is foun- 
ded on and leading to Right, and as Order alone reveals us 
real Beauty — thus Wisdom, Strenght and Beauty — these 
sacred principles of our masonic work are the very means 
for the right ends and surely and safely will lead us on with 
the purest light of clear knowledge to the most-high Master, 
the Spirit of Order, Right and Truth. 



The contemplation of the life, strife and teaching of two 
god-sent heroes serve us as the principal rules in the erection 
of that grand temple the area whereof will, ui)on the day of 
fulfilment, fraternally embrace the large common heai-tof all 
mankind and whose towering apex with it's keystone will 
reach-up into the father-heart of the eternal primordial Spirit 
and All-Being, into the ever-loving heart of the supreme 
Architect of the Universe. 

The great admonisher to repentance, John the Baptist, 
shows us the keen line of discipline and righteousness of 
conduct, in stern austerity never so little relenting against 
ourselves and against— not our brother, but our brother's 
acts. John, the Evangelist, the Apostle of Love, unfolds to 
us the other, none the less, keen rule, the rule of enlighten- 
ing revelation and of love. St. John, the Evangelist's theorj' 
does not disagree with a single one of all the different philo- 
sophical systems. In St. John's doctrine thou wilt find, in- 
deed, the reconciliation, solution and fulfilment of the 
seemingly most irreconcilable doctrines of all prominent 
thinkers. St. John's revelation of God as the primordial 
sijirit, as the one great raler of the universe, is for all man- 
kind the true revelation and the veriest Gospel. His love is 
such a truly genuine ray of the One central sun which by its 
mildly fostering warmth gives universal life — that even the 
debility of the poor old nonagenarian, yea, even the grave 



31 

itself conld not extinguish it; hislast words were: "Children, 
love one another!" 

The tiue key to St. Johns doctrine consists in the words 
which form the beginning of his Gospel: "In the beginning 
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word 
was God. All things were made by him, and without him 
was not anything made that was made." 

The expression "Word" in the ti'anslation renders the 
Greek original's expression ^' Logos", and just as the ger- 
manic expression "word" in its etymological relation has the 
same root with the expression "Order", just so order is like- 
wise the most essential and principal meaning of the Greek 
expression "Logos". If this definition of the expression 
'"Logos" be considered correct, St. John's above introduc- 
tion to his Gospel would read: "In the beginning were 
Order, Right and Truth, and Order, Eight and Truth were 
with God, and Order, Right and Truth are God. All things 
were made by Order, Eight and Truth, and without Order, 
Right and Truth was not anything made that was made. " 

St. John's sentence thus clearly and plainly says: "God 
was Order, Eight and Truth" — yea, Order, Right and Truth 
were the primordial spirit of the universe, are still to-day 
the same, and will be the same for ever and ever. And thus 
by this quintessence of St. John's veriest doctrine we 
directly arrive at his revelation of God as the Almighty 
Architect of the Universe, the eternal primordial Spnit, 
whose bodily rayment we daily afresh admire in the immen- 
surable compass of the World. 

And is the existence of such an All-Spirit really incom- 
prehensible to thee.'' Thou doest not contest the existence of 
a spirit in every living human body, and when a human 
being died, thou ownest that, then, spirit and matter be 
separated — well, all the Universe is likewise matter, likewise 
a body the perpetual vital activity whereof is unmistakably 
manifest at the slightest glance — and this huge body of mat- 
ter should live without being, like ourselves, the habitation 
of a spirit? 

No, just as the body of man, of individual man, is a mi- 
croscopic image of the universe — just so, even if likewise 



32 

on (liminutivelj- reduced scale, man's spirit presumably 
cannot but be an image of that primordial spirit who, be- 
yond all reasonable doubts, as vivifying agens inhabits and 
pervades every atom of the dead matter of the universe. 

And besides the recognition of this primordial spirit as 
Order, Eight and Truth we owe to St. John the aublimest 
example, to him all of whose long life was nothing but pure 
love even with its last feeble gasp breathed love. To him, 
and verily, we owe our grandest example, as for our ma- 
sonic endeavors, too, Virtue's victory and the ennobling 
establishment of a general brotherhood among men is the 
final aim and goal. 

Oh ! If St. John's last words only would be re-echoed by 
every human heart ! "Children, love one another !" With- 
out this love life is desolate and dreary, our doings vain — 
without love mankind would ever lack the first condition 
and fundamentary base of its very existence. Therefore, 
may we, every-one, acknowledge every fellow-man as 
brother; strive to further the brother's weal. Nobody may 
seek to serve exclusively his own interest, neither in regard 
to honor and influence, nor in regard to wealth and afflu- 
ence, nor in regard to stubbornly upholding his opinions 
and individual views. 

True brotherlove does not know anything like selfish- 
ness, if even of the slightest shade, and he only whose 
heart is replete with true love, is able to do his share of 
work in the erection of the invisible temple of Virtue, our 
true Sanctuary for Order, Eight and Truth. 

Henceforth, then, let us banish all emotions of selfish- 
ness from our hearts, let us adopt as rule this, St. John's, 
grand bequest, let us like brothers share in the treasure he 
left us, in his jjarting salutation and farewell from the very 
brinks of life: "Children, love one another !" 



From all the rest of Creation, man whom the ancient 
thinkers of dark ages already acknowledged to be its bloom 
and pinnacle, is perhaps by nothing distinguished more 
clearly and unmistakably than by the free will which from 



33 

the first dawn of his individual existence by every man is 
owned as bis inalienable innate inheritance. 

This free will of the individual man is the sole genitor 
of his power of contradiction; this power of contradiction 
develops into propensity to contradiction and generates in 
further evolution Scepticism and Criticism. 

The endlessness of the universe in regard to space and 
time, however incomprehensilile the thought of infinity in 
itself may be considered to be, cannot be doi;bted. The in- 
finite endlessness of the universe, nevertheless, is easily 
proven and still never to be comprehended To the Sceptic 
the endlessness of the universe is no doubt the hardest nut 
to crack, because he refuses to beluve, but merely wants to 
knon\ and therefore, as he pretends, merely doubts for the 
purposes of his knowledge. But the Scepticism of these 
lamentable martyrs of their own insatiable desire for knowl- 
edge is not less infinite than all the universe itself too, and 
the wider extent be given to their knowledge by their end- 
less doubting, the more importunate grows their conviction 
that, in proi:)ortion to matters they do not yet know any- 
thing about, all their acquired knowledge still amounts to a 
mere pittance, and thus their doubts must increase at the 
same ratio with the increase of their knowledge. 

The absolute endlessness of doubt is not less settled 
than the endlessness of the universe. We are able to prove 
both, but we can neither cure, nor even comprehend them — 
yea, we must own that we are fully aware of their endless- 
ness, but still would not be able to believe in it. If thus we 
know matters that we are not able to comprehend, but on 
the other hand comprehend matters that we never shall be 
able to know, how much more fully are we entitled, nay, in 
duty bound, to believe in matters that we must own to com- 
prehend though we for ever be unable to know them. 

Our knowledge is limited and hemmed in by certain 
precise and unsurmountable barriers, but not so oiir belief. 
Our belief is endless — as much so as our scepticism. There- 
fore we must drop as hopeless all endeavors to conquer by 
knowledge, a finite, limited power, our scepticism which is 
an endless unlimited power. On the contrary, we are sure 



34 

that belief will always suecessfnlly battle against scepticism, 
because both are endless alike; and under the presupposition 
thatbelief and scepticism as two endless powers must be equal 
to each other in intensity, both must counterbalance and 
annihilate each other on account of the one being positive 
and the other negative in their muttial relation. Now then, 
the annihilation of doubt being the sole <iim and object of 
belief, with this mutual annihilation belief has succeeded 
in its task. 

That jiist is the fatal mistake of the so-called atheists 
and of the large crowd of shallow-witted and self-conceited 
free-thinkers, that they always look to knowledge as the 
counterpoise wherewith to outweigh and annihilate the 
doubts of Scepticism. The only proper counterpoise 
against scepticism is belief. Knowledge only conquers er- 
rors, never doubts. Errors will be wiped-out by knowledge. 
Doubts increase with increase of knowledge, but vanish be- 
fore the rays of belief. In the everlasting strife betvFeen 
scepticism and belief which is innate with mankind, knowl- 
edge serves merelj' as armament, which both have equally 
to use against each other, and the improvement whereof, 
therefore, is with equal eagerness carried-on by both con- 
tending parties. The hotter the battle rages between belief 
and scepticism, the faster will knowledge — this mutual 
weapon of both — be found improving and perfecting. But 
scepticism, the better it succeeds in perfecting its armament 
"knowledge" always cuts-ofE with it one or two of its own 
hydra-like heads, whereas belief with every slight improve- 
ment of knowledge — which likewise is belief's shield and 
sword — will always invigoiate anew and be filled with fresh 
valor and invincible confidence of final success. 

Just this war, however, is the principal difference 
between the spirit of man and the eternal arch-spirit who 
reveals himself as Order, Eight and Truth, whom we revere 
as the omniscient source of light and adore as the Almighty 
Architect of the Universe. 

By his state of individualitj' the individual man is not 
distinguished from all other creatures of Nature's vast 
realm. The star-spangled heavens, the animal kingdom as 



35 

well as that of Botany and Mineralogy— all comprise and 
present us innumerable hosts of diverse single forms or in- 
dividiaals which may be classitied in kinds or species or 
families. It is, in fact, not the Almighty Arch-Spirit nor 
Nature who individualize, it is only man's mind what, for 
the mere sake of its own convenience, singles out, classifies 
iind individualizes every subject of its contemplation. But 
who and what is man? — 

Man is neither the callow piped of Plato, nor is man to 
be counterfeited into a nephew or even son of Jack-an-Apes. 
Man, rather, is a spirit immortal like the primordial arch- 
s])irit — spirit emanated and sprung from this arch-sphit and 
going back to him. Yea, Man is spirit emanating from the 
primordial si^irit, in his character and qualities immutable 
through the whole chain of innumerable individuals gifted 
with free will and self-consciousness, in the manifestations 
of his activity evolving into high and infinite development, 
like the great primordial arch-spirit continually at work, a 
spirit whose fall consists in the wilful solution of the 
natural close intimacy with the arch-spirit, his progenitor, 
and in the self-made prejudice that makes him call labor a 
curse -and whose redemption or conciliation with the arch- 
spirit cannot take place without, and therefore is princi- 
pally depending on the conviction that useful activity is 
just as much the sole purpose as it is the highest blessing 
of his existence. 

Proof for the perfect solidarity of the human spirit's 
Onehood or Unity through the whole chain of the living as 
well as all past and future generations, in first instance is 
rendered by History; another proof by the Sympathy which 
unmistakably exists between the individuals of all ages and 
zones, and which manifestly is nothing but the Egotism of 
the human race as of one one-being spivit-existence. 

Whatsoever in every single individual man develoi^s and, 
so to say, evolves this egotism into sexual love or into the 
love of family, home and country and last but by no means 
least, into the love of all mankind, is clearly sympathy of 
the individual with all other individuals of the same kind, 
and this sympathy, on the other hand, just is the mere 



36 

egotism of the one onely common hnman spirit, being snb- 
ject to the feeling of his tnie onehood and closely embracinj^ 
a more or less extensive circle of individuals. 

And just as this sympathy proves man to be one onely 
spirit, just so the sympathy of the human spirit with the 
all-pervading arch-spirit proves the close relation, yea, the 
actiial onehood of both. This sympathy likewise is met with 
in all individuals of all ages and climates despite the infinite 
diversit}' and sliding scale in their respective states of cul- 
ture and development. This unity with the supreme arch- 
spirit we find unmistakably expressed by man's everlasting 
and ubiquitous divination of the Deity, b}^ man's belief in a 
God. 

Plato already taught that this belief be innate with man 
and originating from some former life of the spirit. Kant and 
Leibnitz, these two eminent standard-bearers of Keason, 
declare positively, that this belief, as well as the manifest 
ability to form at least a conception of some superior being, 
coiild be originallj' implanted into man only by such 
superior being himself, yea, could not be derived but im- 
mediately from the eternal primordial arch-spirit, from God 
himself. 

The sympathy of man with the arch-spirit is illustrated, 
besides, and to a certainty proven by the co-incidence and 
congruity of diverse legislations of civilized nationalities. 
The laws of Drako, of Lykurgos, of Solon, of Numa, as well 
as the laws of Con-Fn-Tse and the Mosaic commandments — 
they all render testimony for the acknowledgment of neces- 
sity that the individual has to keep alive the feeling of being 
in unison as well with the arch-spirit as with all other indi- 
viduals. 

All that is contained in these diverse legislations has 
exhaustively and no less c(>mpletely than concisely been 
condensed into those few plain words of our : "Love thy 
God above all and thy neighbor as thyself." Oh ! This short 
sentence, surely, is something superior than the laws given 
by some philosopher or founder of a new religious Creed ; 
this sublime word is pure natural law, and if the individual 
only lacked the freedom of will, there would be no necessity 



37 

for this law of laws, man would act according to its behest 
unconsciously and spontaneously. 

Therefore, the conquering of our own free will is to be 
recognized as our principal task and first duty. And to such 
a perfect mastering of our own free will we exclusively can 
owe it, if we feel ourselves to be in closest unison with all 
other individuals of the human race and not less with the 
pHniordial arch-spirit, too. The perfect onehood of the 
single man with the arch-sj^irit as well as with all other in- 
dividuals is the state of perfect innocence, righteousness and 
felicity wjiich has been promised us as God's kingdom by 
the founders of Christianity and which we have to strive to 
attain-at and, by more or less perfect mastership over our 
free will shall more or less successfully acquire. 

Man is a spirit emanated from the i^rimordial arch- 
spirit, diffused into the numberless individuals formed of 
matter, but gifted with free will and self-consciousness, 
finally going home to the arch-spirit and merging into one- 
ness with him. 

Wfio dares to disown that the most manifest analogy 
exists between the matter forming the universe and the 
ubiquitous arch-spirit living in it, on the one hand — and on 
the other hand, man's body which likewise by chemical 
analysis is }Droven to consist of all the same elements of 
matter that form the universe, and the spirit that lives in 
this body, too ? 

Oh ! This marvelous and unmistakable co-incidence 
entitles, yea, compels us to the belief that such must needs 
be the true task as well as the final destiny of man : to strive 
for and to acquire the re-instatement of his unison with the 
arch-spirit by conquering his free will. And as this final 
goal of all the human race, likewise, forms the cardinal point 
of our masonic work, we freely and joyfully may profess 
that everj' true man is a true brother mazon, and every true 
brother mazon a true man, too, and that our royal craft, 
mazonrj', this perfect ashlar which mere wicked hatred only 
attempts to repudiate and throw aside, shall and will be the 
true corner-stone, the one very rock of wisdom. 



38 

In the satisfaction of your Lunger for knowledge j'ou 
seek your salvation, and you refuse to take notice of and 
discuss, yea, you even flatly repudiate everything l)ut what 
you expect to be able to know? Then, of course, you cut-off 
and, from the very outset, cut-ott' yoiu'selves all possibility 
of an interchange of thoughts. 

Has not Socrates already, have not, since his times, 
quite a respectable cohort of prominent men who for their 
wisdom are praised by all generations as heroes of thought — 
have they not ever been prone to profess that, surely, the 
only thing they really knew was the truth that they actually 
knew nothing and even could not expect ever to know any- 
thing? 

Decidedly, every single one of the many cases where by 
your own experience yoii must have been taught, how soon 
and how easily convictions that for ages had been adhered- 
to and believed in as unimpeachable truths, have often ex- 
ploded as prejudices and bare delusious — every one of these 
single cases ought to have served yoii as satisfactory proof 
that this renowned and often by fools sneered at declaration 
of Socrates about the absolute nullity of all human knowl- 
edge was, surely, not a mere dialectic pun or amusing para- 
doxon, but in reality the only true starting point of wis- 
dom — wisdom's beginning. For, who would be able to 
vouch-for and warrant thee that all what but yesterday thou 
feltest perfectl}' sure to know, to-day — yea, this very miniate, 
perhaps, may not all of a sudden reveal itself to thee as pre- 
judice and counterfeit or superstition? 

It has quite unmistakably by experience been proven 
that it never can be man's task to seek his happiness ex- 
clusively in knowledge, for knowledge will— even if, like 
Titans, it could tower Mount Ossa on Mount Pelion — never 
be able to succeed in upsetting the Moimt Olympos "Truth." 

Do not i^resume that on this account I boldly want to 
abrogate all man's perfect title to his truly innate and ever- 
owned hunger for knowledge, so to do I did not foster the 
shadow of a thought. 

What I take leave to blame and to contend against is 
not man's hunger for knowledge this truest foster-mother 



• 39 

ami faithful nurse of Civilization, but is the delusion that 
this hunger for knowledge, here on earth already, ever 
could attain its end ; is the stubborn and blind rage of 
fanatical intolerance which prompts all — isms, and 
Materialism particularly, ever to attack the just title of belief 
and faith, although all its own claimed imaginary knowl- 
edge, if anything, at the bettom is nothing but belief and 
almost always mere delusion and superstition only. 

The only thing we are able to know with absolute cer- 
tainty is this: that we do not and can not know anything, 
and all other knowledge that goes beyond this only one, is 
for as long as it lasts, nevertheless, nothing but belief and 
will be ridiculed and set aside as mere delusion, as soon as 
it ceases to hold jDroof or at least, as soon as it has been 
superseded by newer or more powerful would-be knowl- 
edge. 

And thou whose whole knowledge, for the most, is mere 
belief only— thoii darest to claim and declare that thou 
couldst do without any belief— darest to preach and tyran- 
nically pretendest that belief ought to be butchered uj^on 
the altar of civilization and progress as the first and most 
indispensible with sacritice? 

Oh ! Thou unblest fellow who puttest on the airs of 
being the sole hereditary lease-holder of all Misdom— thou 
appearest as sacrileging the holiest sanctuary of humanity, 
the shrine of true civilization, the eternal throne of the 
most-high Master Order, Eight and Truth. For if ever thoxi 
shouldst succeed to unroot and put-out mankind's belief, 
to rob man of his Faith, whilst hoodwinked and longing for 
light in his wretchedness he straggles towards the eternal 
East — to rob him of his Faith, this his first leading-star — 
thou, at the same time, wouldst darken and cause to set for 
ever the other two sister-stars of Faith — Love and Hope 
with their showers of bliss. 

And "what all this ado for" thou sneeringly askest me — 
it is merely for and on account of thy hunting for antitheses 
where there are none, on account of thy own boldly 
creating artificial contrasts as game which thou huntest in 
vain for as there are no real ones. Either thou — as before 



40 

we linve seen and slio\vn-up as an illusory experiment — en- 
listest thy knowledge as n contrast against doubt or thou 
triest to enlist thy knowledge as the contrast against belief, 
though thou never canst disjjrove that thy nuich boasted-of 
knowledge either is mere mistake and vain illusion or, for 
the best, nothing but sheer belief which, thus and then, 
would have to be its own antithesis. 

A brisk activity to' satisfy the desire for knowledge will 
never hurt the true belief and faith, but absolutely can 
merely foster, invigorate, purify and ennoble them. And 
just on that account, in brotherly love, I would like to take 
and heartily shake the hand of every man whose honest 
energies tend to satisfy the desire for knowledge. And 
though some of these workers perhaps imagine that they 
battle against belief and faith as the dreaded arch-fiends of 
all progress, I plainly conceive that, surely, from every 
victory they maj' boast-of, not only new blossoms for my 
faith spring forth, but for themselves, too, a step is won 
towards the great day's final dawn, when they, too, will 
perceive and acknowledge that all their true knowledge is 
mere belief and faith and that they have, themselves, 
contributed to settle faith from whose hated tyranny they 
strove to free mankind, on its glorious throne that boldly 
withstands all shocks and radiantly shines forth in its 
iinshakable surety of final victory. 



Wouldst thou deem it to be as little fair as cheap to 
ridicule and sneer-at systems which we owe to the sagacity 
and life-long perseverance of eminent thinkers and success- 
ful investigators? Wouldst thou feel inclined to blame me 
for the boldness not fully to chime-in with the boundless 
applause that welcomed the gospel of the modern worshiji- 
pers of Nature : the monkey-theory of their great apostle 
Darwin, if I, without reserve, dared to contend point blank: 
•'Man is neither Plato's callow biped, nor ought man to be 
counterfeited into a nephew or even son of Jack-an-Apes" ? 

I too, joyfully admire the great investigator's merits 
which mankind clearly owes him for his having proven, in 



41 

a poiDiilar und easily to be imdersioocl way, the tnitli of the 
theory of Evolution which, ninny years before, by Kant and 
some other German philosophers always had bravely been 
battled-for. Darwin has the undispvitable merit that he 
made this theory <he available property of all mankind, just 
Ijy his, so to say, translating it from cloud-veiled theory into 
ready-cash practice. I surely, too, would not like stvib- 
bornly to shut my eyes against his, with convincing perspi- 
cuily, jDroven problem: that our kind all-mother Nature 
nowheres and never can have marched on with girlish stray 
iea})s, and I found, perhaps, the purest if not iirst inau- 
guration of this theory of evolution in the profound but 
clear meaning of St. John's great key-word: 'All things were 
made by Order, Kight and Truth (by Logos or logically) and 
without Order, Right and Truth was not anything made that 
was made." 

That, in its unassuming modesty, is the kernel and very 
germ of all the much admired illustrations and philosophi- 
cal essayings of the theory of evolution, though just on ac- 
count of its plain and simple modesty St. John's great word 
generally is misinterpreted into all kinds of metaphysical 
hyijotheses. 

The "Monkey-Theory" and the "Origin of Sp?cies" ap- 
pearautly are in first line nothing but an illustrative outflow 
of the Idea of Evolution and have, like this idea itself their 
gooil and valid title, as far as the material creation of our 
material world goes. Man's body may, surely and unmis- 
takably, have to look for its source and origin unto the same 
species of beings with the monkey, though this siaecies, at 
present perhaps, may be extinct — in man's body I, too, can 
surely discover nothing but an animal of high and fair 
development. But in my opinion man principally and in 
first instance, always, is Spirit and verily "Spirit emanated 
from the primordial arch-spirit, diffused into the number- 
less individuals formed of matter, but gifted with free will 
and self-consciousness, finally going home to the arch- 
spirit and merging into oneness M'ith him " 

And though by this plain definition the veiled root of 
man's descent may boldly have been jjlaced into higher and 



42 

nobler regions than the bound.iries of Monkeydom, trnlj' — 
just as little does tliis detinition contend against Darwin's 
new and no less impregnable supposition that the stuff 
whereof all the l)odies of individuals belonging to the human 
race appearanty are foi-med, m.ay welcome as its ancestors 
the Orang-Outan, Gorilla or Chimpanzee. The contest— if 
any contest there be — does merely spring from the stubborn 
partiality wherewith the absolute Materialism repudiates the 
existence of tlae ideal Spirit-World. 

Whosoever is not able to see in man anything nobler 
than a beast of somewhat higher development, may be quite 
welcome to the comfort of the reflex which, quite significant 
and ready at hand, shows his own image from the faithful 
mirrc-r of his monkey-theory and, probably, will furnish him 
the best points for the proof and illustration of his funny 
problem. Who, on the other hand, upholds the grand trinity 
Order, Right and Truth — I won't even say as his God- as 
supreme Master, as Creator and Preserver of the World — 
but merely as mental conceptions, and to whomsoever the 
existence of powers and conceptions, as liberty, activity, 
faith, love and hope are not less comprehensible and present 
than the existence of his own dear apeborn body or the 
existence of our mother-earth, yea, of the whole world as far 
as it is tangible for our five senses — he must give himself 
the lie if he disown the existence of an ideal or spirit-world. 
The world of matter, subject to incessant change, far 
from being the only truly existent world, is a world that is 
changing, decomposing and evaporating continuousl}' and, 
just on that account, in reality the world of mere seeming 
existence, the world of constant decay and of ine^-itable 
death. The ideal world, on the other hand, is immutable for 
ever and of eternal youth and, just on that account, of ab- 
solutely real existence. 

And much alike, as the knowledge of those blind wor- 
shippers of Matter, for the best, is mere belief, and as the 
belief and faith of the idealist victoriously^ bursts the cloud- 
veil of doubt, just so, at closer test and examination. Matter 
discloses itself to thee as mere evanescent and meteoric, 
fleeting vision, while the Ideal will reveal itself in Truth's 



43 

full splendor as the eternal central sun creating light and 
life. 

To me the Ideal is the absolute, Matter only the imagi- 
nary and seeming Keality. And as little as Belief and Knowl- 
edge, just as little can Idealism and Kealism ever be con- 
trasted. The true Eealism comprises and embraces with 
even power the sister-si:)heres of Idealism and Materialism, 
and he only who feels equally at home and knows to secure 
his citizenship in the spheres of both of them— of Idealism 
and of Materialism — he, only, will begin to understand his 
own nature and to acknowledge Order, Kight and Truth as 
the eternal and only primordial source of all Being. 



Thou askest me, whether man's freedom is nothing to 
me, as I boldly have declared that man's principal task be 
the conquering and perfect subjection of the free will, this 
glorious innate heiiioom of man — I joyfully reply: Freedom 
is inseparable from the most high Master, OrJer, Right and 
Truth. Freedom is the only proper name for the bright 
holiday-garb wherein He does appear to us as soon as man 
has re-attained-at and re-instated his unison with Him — to 
me Freedom is the almighty arch-spirit's nuptial robe 
wherein he reveals himself as loving groom to the pure 
virgin-spirit of man whfim He, with everlasting love, will 
enwrap with this clarifying garment when the grand nuptial 
morning shall dawn. 

And what is Freedom to thee? — Oh ! Surely, thou 
knowest not, nor ever wilt know Freedom, as long as thou 
merely expectest to find it in the absolute and never-to-be 
restrained rule of thy free will. 

That, too, is one of the oldest and commonest prejudices, 
that man's freedom has to consist in the absolute lack of 
restraint to the rule of the free will; for, such a rule of our 
free will would jjlace man jiist into the very worst of bond- 
ages. No tyrant would even be able to fetter the free man 
with chains so weighty, nor to throw him into dungeons so 
dark that he would succeed to turn him slave. Slaves never 
are made by tyrants — but tyrants always are made by slaves. 



44 

And jnst so it decidedly is at every man's option, ' wlietlier 
he will bj' conquering hi« own free will make himself master 
of it and thereby secure tlie bliss of the only true freedom, 
or whether he will prefer to stick in vile slavery by indo- 
lently leaving his own free will with its animal proclivities 
wield supreme power over him. 

The vile panders and wild j^retorian hords tyrants al- 
ways are surroiinded by, at all times have — and for the 
short-sighted vast majority of lookers-on successfully too — 
tried to disguise their miserable slavedom under the vain 
glitter of outward show, and to hide it from sight by the 
mere display of their sham-freedom — brutish revels and 
wild debauches of licentiousness. Not unlike them, has 
mankind, at all times, trumpeted-forth as genuine liberty, 
what in reality is vile serfdom wherein they daily deep and 
deeper sink in consequence of their unmanly yiehliug to the 
dictates of their own free will. This foolish deception man- 
kind has kept-up so long that finally this lie merely by the 
power every bad habit is known to possess has grown- 
xvp into a settled prejudice with the liar himself. Is it not 
always the curse of evil-doing and, therefore, 'particularly 
the never-failing curse of lie, that lie's s verest conseqiience 
always with due reverge will fall back on the liar himself V 

Has it not, quite lately only, been proven again most 
strikingly by the course of History? It is merely a few de- 
cades, since that even a philosopher like Hegel felt disposed 
to offei'-up praise and burn incense unto the French nation 
which on account of its "lively activity" and particularly 
owing to "its hicky miscegenation of Germanic and Ko- 
manic character" he thoiight had, above all other nations, 
the glorious task and undisputable vocation ,, always to pa- 
rade as the born van-guard of Civilization"? Hegel feels 
pleased appearantlj' to call this vainest and shallowest of all 
human races "the nation of action, History's pre-elected na- 
tion since long ago." 

Oh ! Mr. Hegel, how hast thoii been blind-folded by 
Lie ! — "World's history is world's doom !" sounds the echo of 
another of thy trumpet-flourishes sorrowfiilly back to thee. 
Thy pre-elected nation stands unmasked as History's cau- 



45 • 

tion elect to give all future generations warning, how irre- 
trievably frantic nations must be demoralized bj' the wor- 
sliip of Lie, and how little they can expect to escape the 
avenging sword of slighted truth. 

Just so it is the delusion that Freedom consist in the 
absolute lack of restraint to the rule of free will — yea, and 
nothing but this delusion— what blind-folds man for the 
discernment of true liberty and disables him to acquire its 
grand prize. And, surely, when this delusion shall finally 
have given-way to the conv ction that Freedom merelj' shall 
blooiii for him who succeeds to free himself from the de- 
grading serfdom of his own free will and to acquire, instead, 
the absolute mastery of and over his own free will — then, 
only then man maj' call Freedom his own. 

Therefore, to attain at real liberty, emerge from the 
bondage of thy own free will — to be truly free and to, always 
remain free, master without relent thy own free will— and 
surely, then and there, thou wilt have found the true sacred 
ground for God's Kingdom, the promised land, and mayest 
exultingly exclaim : "Eureka ! I have found thee — yea, found 
thee in the full radiance of Order, Eight, and Truth, thee 
fervently longed-for shore of eternal peace, thee, land of 
true Freedom !" 

Oh ! Do not think that I am enraptured and, like the 
worn. out pilgrim who in dire deserts all of a sudden by a 
loftj^ reflex of gay green grounds feels invigorated afresh, 
do likewise gaze on a fairy hoax or dream-born image of a 
freedom which metaphysically originates from poetical im- 
agination. 

Thou, my land of Freedom, art no illusion, and just be- 
cause I, too, have so fully succeeded to find thee, my good 
luck has, perhaps, transijoi'ted me into misinterpreted 
though just enthusiasm. My land of Freedom is the 
generatrix of the bliss I feel, is not the shadow-child of bare 
enthusiasm — and if thou want plain words to convince thee, 
let me try to sum-up my argument in a few simple lines 
thus : 

Thou claimest to be free when thou without restraint 
draggest-along the rattling chain of thy own free will, which 



46 

is innate with thee as well as with every human being, and 
thus, as slave of thy own fi*ee will, thou divestost thyself of 
true Freedom. Only he who understands to master his own 
free will, shall enjoy true Freedom's bliss. Like all other 
things, Slavery's bonds and Freedom's palm do for every 
body but begin with himself. 



Daisies, Pansies and Heatherbells. 



49 



LOVE. 



The peaceful heart that glows of love- 
Don't touch it, oh ! let it alone 
And do not quench the spark divine^ 
Indeed, it would'nt be well-done. 



When somewhere on this planet's globe 
Is to be foiind an Eden still, 
It, surely, is a man's pure heart 
That brother-love and kindness fill. 



Don't darken ye the sunny light 
Wherein it shins as glorified. 
Beware lest ye do hurt it e'er 
That it should shriek in scorn and spite. 



Good many a staunch heart broke, because 
Its veriest life's clear spring was soil'd, 
And many another turn'd itself 
From love so mild to hate so wild. 



50 



And manj' a heart tliat bleeding cIos'J 
Itself, cried yelling ont foi- Inst 
And sank into world's deepest mire — 
The god in it is dead — turn'd dust. 

Then you may me and weejj perhaps, 
But oh ! The tear repentance shed, 
Will make no wither'd rose bloom fresh, 
Will call to life no heart once dead. 



(GeibeL) 



My l§anetuary. 

Blow, Northeaster, blow and howl, 
Give thy most relentless growl, 
Threaten all thy chilling harm — 
In my heart, here, still it's warm. 

Throiagh the world thy terrors wield, 
Sweep through forest and through held, 
Hurl the shingles from my roof — 
This secure place still holds proof. 

In my heart, here, calm reigns still, 
Thither thou'lt not blow thy chill. 
Thither thou'lt not find thy way — 
Here, Northeaster, ends thy sway. 



(F. Weber.) 



51 



PEACE. 



The gay green world in all its pride 
To slumber's rest did yield ; 
T is calm, in night's dark veil abide 
Hill, heath, forest and tield. 

The moon along the sky does pass 
As night-watch ever true, 
In solemn silence. From the grass 
Do sparkle pearls of dew. 

The busy birds, too, silence keep, 
And clos'd are all the flow'rs ; 
No leaf does stir, and fast asleep 
Are hedges, copse and bow'rs. 

Along the river's gliding track 
At anchor every sail — 
A love-bare heart alone would lack 
Its rest from life's fell gale. 

(F. Weber.) 



5-2 



Aiitiiiiiiinl Parting'. 

Autumn 't was when I, from thee for 
Ever parting sigh'd good-byes ; 
Dreaming, on the hist of roses 
HuHg the last of buttertiies. 

On its pilgrimage to southern 
Climes, ere speeding on its way,. 
Hark ! A thrush thrills from the last greem 
Linden-branch a lust sweet lay. 

Under Zephyr's last soft whispers 
Sighing over fast-flown bliss, . 
Butterfly and rose exchange in 
Whispers, too, their parting kiss. 

Lo ! There drops the rose's leaflet, 
There the butterfly's bright wing, 
And the dying West, too, ceases 
Through the leafless twigs to sing. 

Blustering Boreas awaking 
Throiigh the withering copses show'rs 
Whirling butterfly-wing, roseleaf 
Both through Autumn's lonesome bow'rs. 

Of my own poor heart the last bud, 
Too, is doom'd to withering blight. 
With drear Autumn in my inmost 
Soul I roam on into night. 

(E. Haraerling. ) 



53 



The RaiiiboiY. 

From flying clouds the storm does roar — 
The care-worn youth starts from his door? 

Have thunder's peals and lightning's glare 
Kobb'd of his wits him or his care? 

Nothing is left to caiise him fright 
Whose heart a true love's loss did blight. 

Up-hill towards the ruin'd tow'r 
He darts to challenge lightning's pow'r. 

There with a sun-burst does arise 
God's arch of peace in storm-clad skies. 

Since long the first bland smile does grace 
The hopeless grieving, pale young face. 

By yonder heav'nly pledge he sees : 
The fiercest storm will yield to peace. 



SPRING. 

The beelets hum, 

The children drum. 
The air is mild and clear ; 

Wee warblers sing, 

The green biids spring — 
I feel so bright and queer. 

Full is my heart 

And throbb's its part, 
As were't to burst as well. 

Oh ! Heart, do last 

A while but past 
Dear Spring's reviving spell. 

(F. Weber.) 



54 



May-IJIy and Daisy. 

Ouce, wheu a cbild, in shady bowers 
I wound, 
Such as I found, 
To garlands all the prettiest flowers. 
Fragrant May-Lily and Daisy sweet 
Thus tirst in one of my wreaths did meet. 
As soon as the two each other beheld 
Their love awoke ne'er again to be quell'd. 

But as yonng Sjn-ing his adieux bade, 
Sadly 

I had to see 
My loving flowers withering fade. 
And ench of the two I took back to its home : 
May-Lily to green groves whence it had come, 
And Daisy to yon dewy lawn's verdant face. 
Intent to guard either one's bnrial place. . 

When Spring again its turn did take, 
Soon freed, 
In wood and mead. 
Our loving flow'rets, too, awake. ' 
"Alas ! Would the boy but unite us again !" 
Thus weeping the severed flowers complain. 
With nothing to soothe their longing and grief — • 
Soon both of them comfort found and relief. 

For, could I fail to know their wants, 
While me. 
Since far from thee 
Ever for thee, too, longing haunts? 
Thus quick I broke them and lovingly gave 
Them a home in my bosom as common grave. 
Then the longing they felt for each other, was still'd. 
Then all their most ardent hopes were fulfill'd. 



55 
^ I O ■. E T. 

Say, Violet, sweet Violet, 
How 't i>< that you precede 
In Spring-time every floweret 
In garden, wold and mead V 

It is because I'm but so small, 
That I with May-day nigh — 
If crowded by the flowers all, 
You'ld, siirely, pass me by. 



The broken Ring-. 

The busy mill is turning 
Its wheel in its cool ground — 
My love without returning 
Has left and can't be found. 

She once vow'd love — as token 
She gave this ring to me — 
The tiny ring is broken, 
Her vows has broken she. 

I'd wish to spur my catch-fire 
Steed to hot battle-showr's, 
To camp around the watch-tire 
In dreary midnight-hoiars. 

A harp I'd like to borrow 
And through the wide world roam, 
And sing my lay of sorrow 
Wand'ring from home to home. 

When I some wheel hear plying 
My sore heart feels oppress'd. 
I wish that I were dying. 
Then all woiiid be at rest. 

(VolksHed.) 



56 



To meet a»:aiii. 

It is ordain'd in God's decree, 
That from our most beloved we 

Must part; 
Although there's nothing half so sad 
As those dire moments when we had 

To part. 

Was some j'oung rose-bud given thee, 
Thou putt'st in water it to see 

It grow; 
And does it to a full-blown rose 
Develop — soon it fading goes 
To woe ! 

And has God granted thee thy love. 
And does thj' god-sent love well prove 

Thy own; 
It won't be long and she'll be gone, 
And sighing thou art left alone 

To moan. 

But then let hope soothe thy sore heart. 

For, always when two lovers part 

They say, we part to meet again, 

To meet again ! 

(Feuchtersleben. ) 



67 



GOOD-XIGHT. 

Ovrod-night, fiirewell, my love, to thee ! 
A thousand times good-uight ! 
How Lave I e'er through grief and glee 
Remember 'd thy fair sight, 

Thou'rt far, but still thou art mv dream. 
My star in night's dark shade 
That sparkles from wild clouds' black seam 
Ev love and sorrow spread. 

Of thee there's nothing left to me 
But this pure ray alone, 
And should I ne'er again meet thee — 
Thy image still I own, 

I see thy true heart in thine eyes 
Like Heaven's hue in the sea — 
Good-night, farewell, my only price ! 
My heart remains with thee. 

(W. Miiller.) 



Hunt Lilian's Fare^vel I . 

Who has, oh ! ye forest-bow'i-s 
Built you high upon the hill there V 
Well we praise the Master B\iilder, 

While our voice its accents show'rs: 

"Fare ye well, oh forest-bow'rs !" 

Low the world's confusion cow'rs. 
On the hill-top deer are starting. 
And we sound the bugle parting 

That we waken Echo's i^ow'rs: 

' 'Fare ye well, oh f orest-bow'rs ! 

From our vows in forest-bow'i-s 
Nothing outside e'er shall move us — 
Ever true the old ones prove us. 

Till aloft the last lay show'rs: 

"Fare ye well, oh forest-bow'rs — 

"Father, bless our forest-bow'rs !" 

(Eichendort.) 



59 



my heart afloat. 

When the green reeds ■whisper, 

When the waves curl crisper, 
M'hen my heart is cast fi-ee 

And from the bosom's quiet pillow 

Flees to the rollicking biilow, 
Diving in joy's and woe's deep sea. 

Fisher-maid, when gone 

Boating, don't steer alone 
Out t<j the wild wide main — 

Look, how my heart fond of wooing 

Closely thy wake is pursuing— 
Fislier-maid, fisher-maid, shall thy nets empty remain? 

Take my heart in thy boat, love ! 

T won't much increase its load, love ! 
For it holds nothing but thee. 

Thee, thou light loftiest of creatures, 

Thee with thy merry young features, 
Thee with thy windy mind bent on glee 1 



60 



The joll^y Fiddler. 

The jolJy fiddler stroU'd along the winding Nile, 

O tempora, o mores ! 
When from the mnddy waters crawl'd a nanghtj'f-rocndiln, 

O tempora, o mores I 
WTiich threaten'd to devour him with its wide-opeu'd juw — 
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah ! tempo — tempora ! 
Be prais'd by us for evermore, Dame Musica ! 

The fiddler took awe-stricken his dear old fiddle, 

tempora, o mores ! 
And shrumm'd with his brave bow a mighty splendid 

twiddle, 

O tempora, o mores ! 
Allegro, Dolce, Presto, the like you never saw — 
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah ! O tempo — tempora ! 
Be prais'd by tts for evermore, Dame Musica ! 

And ere the jolly fiddler thus there had his first shrumm 

done, 

tempora, o mores ! 
The cruel crocodile at once to dance begun, 

tempora, o mores ! 
Valse, Counter-dance and Polka, the like you never saw, 
Hurrali, hurrah, hurrah ! O tempo — tempora ! 
Be prais'd by us for evermore. Dame Musica ! 



61 

There on the sands the crocodile danc'd whirling round 

about, 

tempora, o mores ! 
Upsetting seven pyramids with tail and gaping snout, 

O tempora, o mores ! 
For they were shaky long ago, the like yoii never saw. 
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah ! O tempo^tempora ! 
Be prais'd by us for evermore, Dame Musica ! 

And when the pryamids had slain the infernal hungry 

beast, 
tempora, o mores ! 
He went into a restaurant and sumptuously did feast. 

tempora, o mores ! 
Port, Claret, siiarkling Hock and Sack, the like you never 

saw, 
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah ! tempo — tempora ! 
Be prais'd by us for evermore, Dame Musica ! 

A fiddler's throat is certainly like every other hole, 

O tempora, o mores ! 
And if he has not done yet, he's still at it, heart and soul, 

O tempora, o mores ! 
And we, boys, we feast with him, the like you never saw, 
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah ! tempo— tempora ! 
Be prais'd by us for evermore. Dame Musica. 

(Geibel) 



62 



Boozer*!!* Precaiilioii. 

Fresh from the Pub mj' departure I took — - 
Street, how devilish queer dost thou kiok ? 
Eight side and left side, both interchang'd — 
Gin, I dare say, has its senses derang'd. 

And all the lanterns, what do I see, 
Seem to have join'd in a boisterous spree, 
Waver and stagger and dance round about, 
Are beastly drunk, one and all, there's no doubt. 

And what a silly face, Moon, dost thou cut? 
One eye thou open'st, th'other hast thou shut? 
Thou, too, art drunk and didst share in the game— 
What will Mama say, old wench ? Fie, for shame ! 

Ev'ry thing tipsj', yea drunk- shall I prone 

Face all these boozers, sober alone? 

'Twould be a foolhardy, dangerous boast — 

(Hie) I do rather return to mine host. 

(Miihler. ) 



63 



The Baiiuer-Cwiiartl. 



The Minstrel, battling, keeps the banner-guard 
And on his gallant arm the sword rests sharp still; 
With his bright lay night's shadows greets the bard 
And plays with gory hand the sacred harp still: 
"The lady whom I love, I do not name, 
Though I have vow'd to wear her colors ever; 
For, light and liberty is my sole aim, 
And from their banner nothing shall me sever." 

The morning dawns, the young day brings new fight. 
The Minstrel from his banner never swerves. 
His sword with telling flashes of bright light 
Kills many whom his thund'ring lay unnerves: 
"The Ifidy M'hom I love, I do not name. 
Close-in with me, fulfil Death's dire endeavor ! 
For light and liberty to die, I claim — 
Thus from their banner nothing shall me sever." 



'Mid Death's wild revels Victory is won — 
From gaping wounds the Minstrel's life ebbs slowlj'; 
ytretch'd on his well-kept banner, though undone 
And dying, hear him sing his lay still lowly: 
"The lady whom I love, I did not name. 
Although my life is lost, my honor never, 
For light and liberty to die, I claim. 
And from their banner nothing could me sever!" 

(F. Lowe.) 



64 

Tlie brave old Trooper anil lii^ C'losik. 

Full thirty years old art thou now, 
Hast weather'cl many a galo, 
Hast me, like a brother, protected, 
And though guns deadly lightnings reflected — 
Thee and me nobody ever saw pale. 

We did encamp good many a night 
In open air drench'd wet. 
Thou alone, cloak, willingly didst warm me. 
And whatever did worry or alarm me, 
Thou hast listen "d to and never shown regret. 

Thou hast disclos'd no secret, mate, 
Wast always kind and true; 
Wast true to me in every bearing. 
Therefore sav'd I thee the trouble of repairing — 
Old pal, I don't want thee new. 

And whether they despise us, 
Thou'rt still the pride of my soul; 
For, where rents and tatters are amassing, 
The bullets have been passing — 
Ev'ry biallet cuts a hole. 

And when the fatal bullet once 
Will set this true heart free, 
Dear cloak, with me be buried— 
Don't let my heart be worried, 
I'll be enwrapt in thee. 

Together we two shall slumber 
Until the roll-call's stroke. 
The roll-call turns-all-to, then, 
And, therefore, I can't do, then, 
Without thee, dear old clofik ! 

(K. Holtei.) 



65 



Wilt thou well landerstand mankind and world. 
Look into thy own heart, there 't is unfurl'd, 
And wonldst thou learn to know thyself, try well^ 
To sally forth from thy own self's frail shell. 

(Bodenstedt, Mirza Scha£fy. ) 



Who judges of himself l)ut by the gauge 
Of his own self, will err assuredly: 
TLou canst as little know thyself, I wage, 
As thou to kiss thyself wouldst able be. 

(B., M. S.) 

Who never stray'd from caution's nan-owness, 
And from his young days' doings feels arise 
Neither repentance ever nor distress, 
Was never foolish — but was never wise. 

(B., M. S.) 

Accosted once by hypocrites I spake; 
"At one with one's own self is at one with God — 
Who hates and curses for Eeligion's sake 
Is grossly sacrileging its life-blood, 

(B., M. S.) 

The happy man spreads happiness 
And does not take nor waive it. 
From whom it sprang— it will no less 
Keturn to him who gave it. 

(B., M. S.) 

Wilt thou know what Wisdom bade, 
And avoid Folly's sure distress, 
Don't let it in vain be said : 
"Never take Fortune for mistress 
Nor Misfortune for thy maid. 

(B., M. S.) 



66 



When thy wrath is spent 
Thou beginst to repent. 



(B., M. S.) 



Who does want for his songs some other impulse 
But his own heart and the world as it is. 
Is himself one of the brainless skulls 
Who call his brainless song a bliss. 

{B., M. S.) 

Whenever a poet does ramble into the intinite 
Cast aside his volume without suspense ; 
If bej'ond plain understanding there's anything in it. 
It has its source in lack of sense. 

(B., M. S.) 



The sage M'on't stroll to some quite far-off seeming place 
To find something that's near at hand, 
Nor stretch his hand toward some bright star of beaming 

rays 
When nothing but a match is in demand. 

(B., M. S.) 



In vain will try the ruffian's hand 
To shatter Beauty's flowers — 
To cut a diamond does demand 
Another diamond's powers. 

(B., M. S.) 

'T is quite easy to cut a M'ise face and put-on 

Avithority's air, 
And gravely to say : ' T do like* this one 

But dislike that there; 
And as I like this one it must be fair 

And that one wrong." 
Of suchlike Critics thou better beware 

With thy gay song. 

(B., M. S.) 



BT 



"Who alwuys turns his eyes to the right ways, 
Whose word the right sense equally right f^ays, 
He's the true poet who, by Heaven's grace, 
Does keep the right key, too, for the right place. 

(B., M. S.) 

The fragrance of the rose will do; 
To snatch it from its stem, I scorn; 
For, him whom suffices its hue 
And balm devine, won't hurt its thorn. 

(B., M. S.) 

Mirza Schaffy once traveling stayd 
At a wealthy man's grand mansion and said: 
*'I shall be thy guest to-day and to-morrow, 
Now banish all thy spleen and sorrow; 
Prepare a feast and invite thy friends. 
And merry we'll make until it ends." 

"I've got no friends," the man replied — 
Mirza Schatty open'd his eyes and cried: 
"With all thy wealth no friends? !" — I say, 
Thy wealth cannot entice me to stay !" 

He shook the dust from off his shoe 
And left without farewell. "For, who" 
Quoth he, "by Heaven was granted no friends 
Deserv's no salute !" and his way he wends. 

(B., M. S.) 



The Cabinet Council. 

The Vezier's Council order'd to attend 

I by the Shah was told: 
' 'Mirza, on what thou heardst pass sentence and 

Without reserve unfold." 



68 



I answer'd; "What I beard in Coniicil will 

Remind me with much pow'r, 
That once I heard tiie rattlinsj of a mill 

But saw no trace of flour." 

(B., M. S.) 

Once I was highly in grace with the Shah 
Who often gave vent to his bitter regret 
That never by jieople with truth he was met. 

I ponder'd over his grief and saw 
He had good cause for his constant complaint, 
But when truth I told him without restraint, 

From his Court I wras banish 'd by the Shah. 

(B., M. S.) 

Kings and princes at first 
For truth may thirst; 
But few, if they share it, 
Have the stomach to bear it. 

(B., jr. S, i 



The sage can do without a prince's grace — 
But can a prince do without wisdom's ravs? 

(B., il. S.) 

The sharpest knives Avill soonest gap their edges; 
Does that commend the sayings of blunt wretches'/ 

(B., M. S.) 

In every man's face 
His record we trace; 
His love and his hate 
There's clearly displaj-'d; 
His innermost being 
There shines well alit — 
But not ev'rybody's seeing 
Nor conceiving it. 

(B., M. S.) 



69 



Walk as himibly and cxuiet as them likest, thy ways — 
Time, for all that, leaves its certain trace 
And the world, too, its mark on thy face, 
Just like sovereigns theirs on money place. 

(B., M. S.) 



Leave their virtue to the pions — 
What it's worth, oh ! Lord, thoii knowest — 
While in constant youth and joyous 
Thou vay heart and spirit showest. 

Where such noble wines are flowing 
Can't the source but be unsoiled — 
Where such fragrant floM'ers are blowing 
Never can the gi-ound be spoiled. 

Keep my plough-ground rich and make, oh ! 
That my song-fount ne'er be dusty ; 
Keep my heart all wide-awake, oh ! 
And my eye keen, clear and trusty. 

(B., M. S.) 

'T is better never to be aj^preciated 
Though to deserve true glory's fairest prize. 
Than without merit to be elevated — 
Great of mere show, but low in one's own eyes. 

\ ) 

Hear what people say : "Who loves , 
Truth, he oiight to have his hand 
In his fleet steed's reins already, 
But who thinks truth, see that he 
His steed's saddle gains already ; 
Who speaks truth, his steed should have 
Wings like swiftest cranes all ready ; 
Still — whoever lies should find 
Some sound thrashing canes all ready. 

(B., M. S.) 



70 



Though there be much danger in speaking the tnith, 
Always, for all that, be truthful and honest, for sooth ! 
Oh ! Mirza SchafEy, don't be in the mud-i^ool of lie 
Tlie Jack-o'-lantern ! As all that is fair, is truth 
Would'st ever thoii open but on what is fair thy eyeV 

But to escape sure chastisement's threaten'd harm. 
Enwrap thy wisdom in songs of flowery charm 
Like sweet ripe grapes that tilled with juices divine 
Hide under leaves and curls that for cover entwine. 

(B., M. S.) 



Shall I laugh, say, or feel soiTy 
At most people's stupid worry 
Who shun their own thought's displaying 
And recant what others are saj-ing? 

No ! I'll praise how God has trac'd it: 
That fools crowd this fair world's stage — 
Would not otherwise be wasted 
All sound wisdom of the sage ? 

(B., M. S.) 



Be niggardly, proud, lavish, bold: 
Be miser with Time's fleeting treasure. 
Too proud to bow to knave or dolt, 
Lavish to scatter love and pleasure, 
And bold enough to stigmatize 
Eelentlessly falsehood and vice. 



(Goethe.) 



What qxiickens Time's tardiest pace? 

Busy ways — 
What stretches Time when we feel loath? 

Our own sloth. 
Wilt thou run, for sure, into debt? 

Wait and fret. 



71 



Wilt thou always succeed ? — Be brisk 

To risk ! 
Who's sure to lay hold of the prize? 

Who defies ! 

(Goethe. ) 



For companions try to find 
Only such m thy life-time 
Who enrich thy heart and mind, 
Who may cheer thee and, combin'd 
With thee, heavenward will climb. 



( ) 



■ Man's brain is able to compass infinites — and, still, 

how often is it all of a sudden full, though merelj^ of some 
tririe full — choke-full! (Lessing. ) 



Wert thou not singled out for life's top-shelf, 
Content thyself ! For, many a worthy man, 
The more he mastery over others won, 
Has lost the mastery over his own self. 

(- 



The best way to remind of favors shown 
Will by repeated favors be alone. 



(- 



The farmer groans : ' 'And do you still 
Sujjpose that I may lose my case?" 
The lawyer says : "Not you — it will 
Be lost in your grand-childrens' days. 



( ) 



72 

i'lieei* tor an incipient little ^cliolsii* 

There's nothinj^ in this world so sweet 
As to attend school trim iind neat; 
To learn your A's and B's to sjiell 
And soon to write and read as well. 
And who'll behave and, wide awake, 
His lessons studies, takes the cake. 
For v/hose attention ne'er will fail, 
May soon read many a wonder-tale, 
Of Jack and Gill and little Tom 
And all wee dwarfs of Fairydom, 
Of Sindbad, Bluebeard and King Crack, 
Of Lilliput and Brobdignac, 
And, last not least. Jack Wittington — 
Oh ! Who can read has lots of fun. 
If you're not able to read a book, 
You would'ut be wiser than hen and duck. 



The Hobby-Horse. 

When biit a wee toddler, for better or worse, 

I sported a horse 
From the toy-shop, gay-color'd, a whistl' in its tail. 
From morning to night its shrill sounds I enjoy'd. 

But all were annoy'd 
And made me skip-o\it from the door and front- rail. 

And now, since a man, again I enjoy 

A hobby-horse-toy, 
Again with a whistle as shrill as of yore. 
Now I whistle as much as I like in my house 

To offspring and spouse- — 
And who does not like it may skij) from my door. 

(F. Weber.) 



73 



The Driiguiiier-Boy. 

■"Where is the captive clrumui«r? Quick 1 
L-eail hither the drunini'er with drum and stick." 

The Emperor bids, and the Aid ■does flj' 
And with the drummer soon draws nigh. 

The Emperor bids: '^Now beat the sum 
Of all your signal-s on thy drum." 

The boy obeys and renders ac-couni 
Of what does mean each signal's sound. 

When pausing, Napoleon bids : "Now beat — 
Thou forgott'st — your signal for retreat." 

"RetrentV" The boy saj'S and touches his hat, 
"There is no English signal for that " 

The warrior-monarch looks wondering on — 
The brave young lad his freedom won. 



The !>^tiii of Austerlitz. 

The dauntless conqueror halts upon steep hill, 
Hi.s marble visage pale and motionless 
Does stare, as though with his keen eye he will, 
Piercing through clouds and smoke, secure success. 

Does he rely on Fortune's constancy, 
Tii-day where he is battling two Cjesars 
By grace of God — self-made third Csesar, he 
Who fram'd his empire on the luck of wars? 



74 



He star's— an fiid-cIe-Ccamp gcalloping niglis- 
And sbouts : "The day is yours !" — A sian-bnrst spSts 
The clouds of smoke and dust and verifies 
The news - "JJehold the sixn of Austerhtz?" 



BoTindless vhite phain all over — saT)le dwells 
Night's wing on it, more sable almost rest 
On it the legions of the West like Hell's- 
Dark army : Moscow's ill-received guest. 

Down-cast they were; how- could they fail to long 
For their own sunny home's with-holden share V 
From many an eye, once sprightly beaming, spi-ang 
The ghastly ice-cold glare now of despair. 

Though morning scarcely dawns, their Emperoi' 
Already nighs, and as blood-red now flits 
The sun's first ray, salntes the young day-star 
With his : "Behold our sun of Ansterlitz !" 



On vock-bonnd clifii in Ocean's desert realm 
With folded arms behold Napoleon — 
But lately ruler of Europa's helm 
Now captive, powerless, all but undone. 

Britannia, sacrileged Liberty's 
Ready avenger, grasp'd the fallen star 
And wafted -^ to secure the dear-bought peace — 
Into the sea its glowing embers fax. 

Behold the captive ! Towards the setting suu 
He lifts his eagle-eyes' care-drooping lids. 
Then knits his brows and with the evening-gun 
Inwardly groans : "Gone, sun of Austerlitz!" 



75 



PORTSMOtTH. 

If thou wilt fnllj' realize the power 

Of the island Kingdom in its veriest splendors, 
Go doM'n to Portsmouth— nowhere see we tower 

Its wonders' rivals, nowhere such defenders 
As Albion's proud wooden walls, and nowhere 
Such armameiits and stores and busy tenders. 

Sciircelj arrived thou triest in vain to go where 

Thou lik'ot, for crowds of blue-ey'd boys surrounding 
Thj' path. All tender boats and boast to show where 

A stranger ought to look for with astounding 
Sensation, they know best. And thus politely 
They lift their bats from brawny fronts abounding 

In golden curls, and modestly though sprightly 
Ask: *'Boat, sirV" till at last thou hast selected 
Yonder blue-jacket who blush'd up so brightly 

As if afraid, lest he might be neglected 

For lack of impudence. Thou foUowst musing 
The lad down to his boat that soon projected 

By his bold oar-strokes, merrily is cruising 

Through lines of giant-hulks, the veriest trophies 
Of England's Navy. His bold talk excusing 

Thy artless guide relates— though sometimes rough he's 
In scoffing foes — his vivid tales of battles 
Where they were taken, that with philosophy's 

Deceits thou dreamst to hear the thund'riug rattles 
Of full broadsides — splinters of oak, their sequel, 
Crash all around — then he winds up his jirattles: 

"Behold the Victory !" Where is her equal? 
Ascend the ladder there and moirnt saluting 
The quarter-deck whence once to Valor's peak well 

Nelson as leader drew — once more disputing 
The sea's supremacy — his boys to glory. 
This sombre plank here was the hero's footing 

Whereon he fell, when bold and jjeremptory 
He fann'd into wild flames their glowing valor, 
When, lo ! his seadogs saw their idol's gory 



76 

Frame droop, his face enwrapp'd in deadly pallor: 
But still they heard his voice its cheers renewing. 
For Victory, his faithful bride, now shall her 
Nuptials pi-epare to crown his ardent wooing 
And celebrate her groom's day on the ocean 
With thund'ring music and unrival'd doinjj;. 

Tears till thy eyes, thy heart throbs with euiotiou — 
Thou follows-t some old pensioner descending 
The hatchways, and witho\it much heed or notion 

At once thou'rt left in darkess —there's no wending 
Thy way for safe return— darkness comijlete, oh I 
Darkness all over, darkness nowhere ending — 

When, lo ! All of a sudden does thee gieet, oh I — 
Is it reality or art thou dreaming ? — 
A radiant apparition — dire to meet, oh !— 

The hero's own indubitably seeming 

Himself. It's him: so says the scintillation 

Of stars that from his breast their rays ai-e beaming: 

It's him . says his left eye's black decoration — 
'T is him : too, says his left sleeve's empty flying. 
The cherish'd hero of the proudest nation ! 

Speechless at first thou starest — then applying 
At last for explanation, just as sudden 
As it appear' d — it's gone — despite thy pr* ing 

Gone — vanish'd and in endless darkness hidden. 
But hark ! What yonder stern voice is proclaiming: 
"Stranger, the sacred planks that thou hast trodden 

Once were the hallow'd death-bed where his flaming 
Dear patriot-heart its last faint sighs was spending. 
Look ! Here did rest his head, this bare wood-framing 

Did bear his maimed form, here he was ending 
His hero-life, so wave-as battle-braving, 
And, thus, thou surely sawst himself ascending. 

In favor of a Nelson Death is waiving 
His claims !" 

Then, in the breadbin's twilight risk it — 
A boy vrill modestly relieve thy craving 



77 



For a memorial, by some navy-biscuit. 

Hand him a "Bob" or two, and no more bother — 
Retinu'd on deck, don't miss the place where brisk it 

Adorns the wheel of this brave vessel's rvidder, 
What every sailor calls the top of beauty, 
Nelson's last signal: "Old England, our mother, 

Experts that every man will do his duty ! 



IMPROMPTU 

on the fly-leaf of a Copy of 

Thomas Mooi'e*^ Irish ]?leloc1ies. 

Of all the pearls from Fancy's blissful shore. 
Of all the gems in Music's sacred shrine 
Is none whose splendor I admire like thine 

Nor whose pure charms I equally adore; 

Of all the magic lays of ancient lore 
And all the intoxicating si^arkling wine 
Of modern Poetry's luxuriant line 

Is none that ever I could relish more. 

Than thy sweet numbers that like home's dear chimes 
Peal over Memory's waves their accords pure, 

And with the record of oiar own fresh times 
Do Melancholy's darkest sorrows cure — 

Than those gay, tender, radiant, thrilling rhymes 
Of thj' true heart and harp, oh Thomas Moore ! 



AUNT BETSY. 

Aunt Betsy, once, in brown curls was 
Of lovely beauty and so blithe; 
Now, since her sunny youth did pass, 
She's snowy white. 



78 



All young ones are great pets M'itli annt 
And ever try, at dusk, to scale 
Up to her lap to make her grant 
A fairy-tale. 

Her basket always yields some sweets 
And charming toy-things from the fair, 
And all the little wee world meets 
Around her chair. 

At night-time she makes them repair 
To bed and tells them of Bo-Peep. 
Aunt Betsy's 'round them here and there 
Until they sleep. 

And has Aunt Betsy left for town, 
All children soon seem doom'd to gloom. 
But, sure, ere long their cheers will own: 
"Aunt has come home !" 

Once Auntie had a husband, yes, 
A bold sea-captain, kind and brave. 
He found his rest, as you may guess. 
In waterj' grave. 

An only son with curls like gold 
And cheeks like roses cheer'd her still. 
He, too, was drown'd, as I was told. 
Near neighbor's mill. 

Aunt Betsy, once, in brown curls was 
iSo lovely beauteous and so gay — 
Then, long before her youth did pass. 
She has turn'd gray. 

But still all children are her cheer. 
Whereever one is born, or where 
Death overtook some little dear — 
Aunt Betsy's near. 

(F. Weber.) 



79 



DEATH. 

Life bore her joys and woes as well, 
She never was known to fret. 
Although she was past ninety — still 
Her frame was nimble yet. 

Yestre'en she took her iisnal stroll 
Through garden-beds and bowers 
And brought her son a fragrant toll 
Collected from sweet flowers. 

After her supper to her bed 
Retiring down she lay. 
The dewy morning found her dead 
With day's first sunny ray. 

That ray stole o'er her peaceful face 
And left its roses there. 
Death, I should think, is in such ways 
Of gloom and terror bare. 

Death, like the sun, with roses came 
To conquer night's dark sway. 
Slipp'd through the bliuds and struck his aim 
Where Mother slumbering lay. 

Death, smiling like the young daj^ came 
From Heav'ns bright canopies, 
And Mothei-, too, lies all the same 
Smiling in joy and peace. 

(F. Weber.) 



80 



Lines of CoiiifoH. 

Defith ! — What is death ? — A sleep, 
And happy who lays down to it. 
From all that made us wail and weep 
We find our rest in this last sleep — 
Thus happy who lays down to it. 

What brings this sleep us ? — Rest. 
Oh ! Happy who this rest has found. 
Who shuts his eyes cheerfixl and blest 
Is safe from trouble in this rest — 
Thiis happy who this rest has found. 

Who will arouse us? — God. 
Oh ! Blest whose eyes shall see the Lord. 
For he is safe from care's dark flood 
Who is awaken'd to hail God — 
Thus blest whose eyes shall see our Lord. 



EXILE. 

Who lonesome roams through foreign lands 
Longing for his sweet home in vain, 
His merciless dark fate it is, 
Affliction's bitterest cup to drain. 

Though welcom'd by the sunniest days 
And many a dewy moon-lit night — 
Far from his home he does not feel 
The moon's sweet charms, the sun's gay light. 

What whilom did engage his mind — 
The landmarks of times long gone by, 
Of glory, science, and of art 
The Monuments raise but a sigh. 

And even of the living tribes 
The busy din can't make him feel 
Cheerful , with jealousy he scorns 
The grounds where strangers' revels peal. 



81 



He won't be cheer'd by forest-bowers 
Nor fields adorn'd by lavish May, 
Hope's veriest emblem, meadows' green 
For him seems chang'd to sorrow's gray. 

The memory even of past bliss 
Will resignation's sigh but start — 
His only consolation is 
To soothe some other jjining heart. 



FARE^VELL. 

So fare ye well, oh ! Children dear, 
If we shan't meet again 
In this frail life so poor in cheer 
And love, so rich in pain. 

Once this world was a paradise, 
Till selfishness arose 
To smother brotherlove in lies- 
Then bliss was turn'd to woes. 

But love, and ye'll charm homeward yet 
The paradise that's gone. 
Love is the only way to get 
It back — the only one. 

Therefore, love one another warm 
And love God's Universe. 
On true love's rock shall wrong and harm, 
Envy and hate disperse. 

And does this world's covetuousness 
From you withhold her prize. 
You are the richest nevertheless-r- 
Yours is God's paradise. 



82 



Laird Duncan Rosse. 

Laird Dtincan Kosse 

A bold knight was 
Kenown'd for manly bravery, 

Loyal and true 

And pions, too, 
Devoid of tricks or knavery. 

Whenever he rode 

From his abode 
Or homeward to his craig did trot. 

He always passed 

A grave-yard vast 
A spectre-hunted dinmal spot. 

In days of yore 

On yonder moor 
They burnt the corpses of their squires. 

Before some Saint 

Had built that quaint 
Old chapel there with its blunt spires. 

Then all around 

In sacred gionnd 
They buried all their ancestry 

As well as all 

Who once did fall 
In battles fought around this see. 

So you may vow, 

There was some row 
Of spectres, goblins, ghosts and ghouls- 

But our brave Laird 

Was ne'er too-much scar'd 
To say his pray'rs for their poor souls. 



sa 



E'en when mid-night 

With moon-light bright 
Shed its queer lustre o'er the place, 

He would not shun 

To ride straight on 
And halt within to say his grace. 

When thiis he had 

Once done, a squad 
Of traitors who had lain in wait 

For him to pass, 

Sprang from the grass 
And pounc'd upon him at the gate. 

Then on his mare 

He shouts his pray'r. 
The **De profundis" Psalm — and lo ! 

From every mound 

All o'er the ground 
Ghosts of "the Deep" oppose his foe. 

Giants of old 

In bear-skin-fold 
With clumsy club and javelin sharp, 

And warriors grey, 

Mail'd cap-a-pie, 
And Minstrels, too, with sword and harp. 

And left and right 

Were put to flight 
Laird Duncan's foes, forever scar'd. 

And ne'er again 

Did hostile men 
Attempt to waylay our brave Laird. 



84 



GODFREY. 



Of torch and bonfire beaming 
The imperial castle on the Rhine, 
Resounds of Music's gayest strains, 
Of songs and games 'mid flowing wine. 

All vassals of the re.alm were 
Assembled by King Conrad's call. 
To celebrate Avith royal pomp 
His daughter's wedding festival. 

Blandly they were invited 
The Primate's high-mass to attend 
And to enjoy banquet and l)all 
As well as tilt and tournament. 

And what does sparkle yonder ■ ' 
Emerging from the wolds of pine 
Gilt by the brightest sunset-flash? 
'T is with his clan Count Falkenstein. 

And at his left in knightly 
Array a gallant youth does ride 
A tierj^ steed of Arab blood : 
Ulric, his noble father's pride. 

He yearns to show his mettle, 
He yearns to earn at tilt and joust 
His knighting from the Emperor 
By his own sacred hand's sword-thrust. 



85 



He dreams of fierce encounters, 
He dreams of nothing but success. 
His father's loving glances tell : 
He does approve his boy's bold guess. 

The youth quests from his parent 
What knighthoods sacred duties were. 
His sire instructs him willingly 
Though not without some hidden care. 

The boy's dreams roam through Future's 
Bland prospects, but the graver man's 
Thoughts turn to memories of the Past 
With all its ne'er accomplish'd plans. 



II. 

A blast of trumi^ets opens 
The lists. We see, with arms at rest, 
Enter of Christian Chivalry's 
Chieftains the proudest and the best. 

The gracious Emperor beckons, 
The King of arms does call the name 
Of ev'ry stalwart knight who sought 
To win the Champion's prize and fame. 

He shakes the golden beaker 
And draws the lots, and lo ! what sight. 
With many a clash and thundering blow. 
This fight like lightning flashes bright. 

And when at last the storm ends. 
The ground is clear'd and put to rights 
For fresh prize-tilts between young squires 
Aspii-ing to be dubbed knights. 



86 



Of all the brave young fellows 
Not one could Ulric's prospects harm— 
They, all, were sent into the dust 
By Ulric's lance and nervy arm. 

Now, when his last opponent 
Succumbs before young Ulric's lance, 
The Emperor from his throne proclaims 
His well-won championship at once. 

And graciously he beckons 
For the young victor to draw-nigh— 
He draws his blade already — now, 
Thou brave young champion, thither fly ! 

Alack ! While he's dismounting 
His frenzied steed does rise and throw 
Head-foremost him aground, and turn'd 
Were all his bland bright hopes to woe. 

His clanking mail did sound him 
His death-knell. In its beauty lies 
His lifeless form to fade-away — 
For ever Death has dimm'd these eyes. 



III. 

Since her liege-lord and son were 
Gone to attend their sovereign's court, 
Of countess Agnes jjleasures was 
For once the better part cut short. 

To while-away her lonesome 
Long days, she plies with thread of gold 
Her needle on a bandoleer 
Of velvet for her darling bold. 



87 



And after she to-day had 
Finish'd her lonesome dinner, she 
Does try from dreariness and care 
To dream-land's blissful shores to flee. 

So when in soothing slumbers 
At last she lay, her loving mind 
Was for its cares rewarded soon 
By visions of most wondrous kind. 

In all the throng of courtiers 
She saw no manly cavalier 
Who would outshine in honor and 
In beauty fair her darling dear. 

How modestly he's kneeling 
Before his sovereign's holy might, 
And now the Emperor-King does lift 
His sacred blade to dub him knight- 
Hark ! Suddenly from dream-land 
Her trusty maid does call her home : 
"Hark, noble mistress, hark ! I hear 
The watch-man's bugle from the dome." 

"From his look-out he's sounding 
The signal all rejoice to hear ; 
He must have seen them where the road 
Does to the river-ford draw near." 

" "And can it be," " the lady 
Exclaims, ""that they so soon may bring 
Our joys back? Hasten and prepare 
For their reception everything !" " 

" "And don't forget to air well 
Their rooms and decorate the hall. 
And season well with spice their baths, 
And place fresh dressing gowns withal !" " 



88 



IV. 

On carpet of black velvet 
Witbin tbe cbapel's cboir a dais 
Of black broad-cloth and crape has been 
Erected at the altar's base. 

Within its dim enclosure 
Yoii see two coffins — he whose all 
Lies here enshrin'd, does kneeling hide 
His wesping eyes into the pall. 

The loss of its sole treasure 
Did break the mother-heart, and oh ! 
Count Baldwin, what m all this world 
Will ever heal or soothe thy woe? 

W^ith one fell stroke Death shatter'd 
All joys of thy declining day; 
Will ever be thy path through life 
Ilhimin'd by one sunny ray ? 

Hadst thou foreseen what burden 
By Heav'ns decree woiald be laid on — 
Thou, hardly, unforgiving wouldst 
Have cast adrift thy elder son. 

Thyself, thou hast exil'd from 
Thy heart and hearth thy first-born boy- 
Who has turn'd back on thee thy curse 
Wherewith thou bad'st Godfrey to fly ? 

Thou hast accurs'd him, thou hast 
Banish'd from home thy lawfnl heir 
To wilderness — and wilderness , 
Star's in thy face now everywhere. 



89 



"Almighty God, forgive me 
My l)ase iniquity and change 
A cruel father's curse for him 
To Heav'n's pure bliss of boundless range. " 

^'I did not dream that, when I 
JVLide Godfrey as an exile roam, 
1 should exile with him as well 
Thy heav'nly peace from this wreck'd home. ' 

"Forgive my sins, God Father! 
8usi.)end a rueful sinner's doom. 
Till as a penitent he kneel 
A pilgrim at Christ's holy tomb." 



V. 

When with the rising sun's ray 
I go to work in field or mead 
The sky-lark's carols warble : "Work 
Is man's most sacred bliss indeed." 

Whose arm is strong, whose hand is 
Industrious, he will succee<l 
To make his whizzing scythe sing; "Work 
T-s man's most sacred bliss indeed." 

And when the curved blade of 
My scythe is, once a while, in need 
Of hammer and hone, it shrill rings : 

"Work 
Is man's most sacred bliss indeed." 

In noon-time's heat, for dinner 
And rest to some kind tree I lead 
My steps; its leaves all whisper: "Work 
Is man's most sacred bliss indeed." 



\)X) 



And for my afternoon's task 
I'm soon refresh'd and duly speed 
Again to make my scythe' sing : "Work 
Is man's most sacred bliss indeed." 

Soon all is mown, hwi ere I 
Have d6ne, my vineyard stood in need 
Of rake'and hoe and rustles : "Work 
Is man's most sacred bliss indeed."' 

My vineyard on the gentle 
Slope of the hill must show no weed 
Nor eyer stops exhorting : "Work 
Is mah^s most sacred bliss indeed." 

My vineyard i>Jways tenders 
Sweet recreation though it need 
Pick-axe and piUning-knife, yet : "Work 
Is man's most sacred bliss indeed." 

Do I but think how soon my , 
Dear ones at home shall press and bleeil 
The jiiicy grapes I vow that : "Work 
Is man's most sacred bliss indeed.": 

Now sunset lights me homeward 
Within our nest to scatter seed 
Of love, and praise the Lord that "Work 
Is man's most sacred bliss indeed.". 



VI. 

"Come, Agnes, let to day us 
Go for the fragrant strawberries 
'That round our Lady's holy shrine 
Abound beneath the sheltering trees. 



91 



*' '"I faiu would, brother Ulrip, • 
<Jo with thee berrying from here, 
If mother won't feel sore that we i 

♦Should leave her lone with Baby dear." " 

"I've ask'd our mother's leave and 
Kindest assent, after I bore 
A good supi^ly of water and 
Dry fagots to our cottage-door." 

"And Brindle, too, I've tended 
.^nd milk'd, and tied O; jaunty toy 
Eight over Baldwin's, little crib , 

To keep amus'd our baby-boy." 

" "And I have swept the floor well 
And dusted all the diairs around 
And put into its proper place 
Whatever things astray I've found." " 

" "In my two little baskets 
That lately thou for me didst wick 
Of rushes, we may gather now 
The purple ben-ies we shall pick." " 

"Thus we may start light-hearted 
And stroll into the wide, wide world— 
And how will father smile to-night 
When he'll see our' day's work unfurld." 

They never mind the flowrets, 
They mind no butterfly to-day, 
They mind no brambles, briars, thorns 
Nor sharp-edg'd pebbles on the way. 

They never dally, never 
Feel some slight hank'ring after play. 
The one sole puri^ose fills their hearts, 
Nothing might tempt their thoughts astray. 



92 



As soon as thej' arrive at 
The well-known grountls they halt and unon 
Commence to pick the pnrple globes. 
Spring's balmiest gift and richest, boon. 



VII. 

In sombre garb, all-over 
Cover'd with dnst a pilgrim nighs. 
Bent on his staff, his bare feet sore. 
But sorer still his care-worn eyes. 

His bleeding heart grief-stricken. 
By pityiess remorse opi)ress'd 
Seems to despair that here on earth 
It ever may tind peace and rest. 

Without a consolation 
Neither from near nor from afar. 
He never in his life's dark night 
May hail a heav'nward leading star. 

Wom-o\it on thorny paths he 
Has stagger'd on as in a dream ; 
For his sad eye the purest sky 
The brightest fields shed no blithe bt-am. 

Behold ! Here where two roads meet 
That leave him at a loss which way 
To tirm, a lowly Lady-shrine 
Bids ovar poor pilgrim halt and pray. 

Down to the dust he kneels and 
For deep devotion's pious pray'r 
He crosses his sinewy hands 
On his broad chest of solace bare. 



93 



In tacit adoration 
His wrinkled brow drops on the stone — 
Oh ! Though his prayer may lack words, 
It reaches yet our Saviour's throne. 

Hark 1 Sweet angelic voices 
Suddenly thrill him through and through. 
In unite but glowing thanks he lifts 
His eyes still moist from sorrow's dew. 

Bright from our Saviour's image 
What light streams on himV He feels blest. 
By our Redeemer's promise are 
His pangs allay'd to peace and rest. 

He rises from the ground now 
When, lo ! His eye there shall drscry 
Two lovely children who with awe 
Though hiirdly shy tow'rds him draw nigh. 



VIII. 

"Hail, reverend father, give us 
Your holy blessing, oh ! and please 
Don't leave these bow'rs before you've tried 
Some of our balmy strawberries." 

" "May Heaven's richest blessings 
Reward you, children dear, so sure 
As you wish strangers to partake 
Of all the good things you call your. " " 

And when they see him wending 
His way to leave, they duly greet 
Him, biit they now see how worn-out 
He looks, and oh ! how sore his feet. 



94 



"Oh ! Father, won't yoii rather 
Than follow yonder lonesome ground, 
Come home with ns on this road here? — 
Oiir mother, snre, will make you sound." 

"You're tired-out and surely 
You coiild not reach on yonder road 
A shelt'ring roof before night-fall — 
Oh ! Follow us to our abode." 

And eagerly they clasj^ now 
His hands in theirs and try to stem 
Him thitherward and won't give-in 
Till he assents to follow them. 

Their innocence, their chatting — 
How does it warm his chilled breast 
That for so long a time in vain 
Has yearn'd for comfort and for rest. 

Like Winter's icy fetters 
Will melt under the Lent-sun's ray. 
Before the light of their frank eyes 
He feels his grief, too, melt-away. 

Now, when they nigh their cottage, 
The mother with her mannikin 
Clasp'd in her arms, stands at the door 
And calls : "Be welcome, all, come-in !" 

' 'Be welcome, reverend father. 
Heartily welcome to our sill ! 
Here you shall take a good long rest — 
I'ou need it — you are weak and ill." 



95 



IX. 

In their soft-ctishion'd arm-chair, 
After a bath with balmy hops 
Well spic'd, refresh'd by bread and wine 
He 8oon into sweet slumbers drops. 

"Be nicely quiet now, children, 
And don't disturb the pilgrim's rest, 
Bring for our supper-table in 
Of our spare-plates and bowls the best' 

"And mind, that you as soon as 
You hear yonr father nigh, you leap 
To meet and tell h;m lest he might 
Disturb the goodoM pilgrim's sleep." 

"Hark, Ulric, there already 
We hear our father's evening song 
From our wheatfield beyond the copse 
Kesound- quick, UUic, don't be long!" 

"You, Agnes, take yoiu- father's 
Fresh' laundried jerkin to the well. 
And wash your face where ruby-marks 
Of your to-day's excursion tell." 

"I shall, meanwhile, serve up here 
Oin- supper, and as soon as you 
Will lead our father in, we'll ask 
Our guest to join our sup^jer, to^." 

"And Baby dear, my darling, 
Will in his crib behave and is 
Till father dear is coming here 
Content with one short hug and kiss.' 



9G 



"Now since all things are ready, 
Come on my arm, my little charm, 
Say : "Welcome, welcome, Papa dear !" 
Ami liug him warm without alarm !" 

"Now, Ulric, go and lead our 
Dear guest into our midst, if he 
Has found sufficient rest to be 
One of our hungry company. " 

"But if he still feel's poorly, 
Tell him to stay in his arm-chair, 
And I shall serve him willingly 
A goodly share of supper there." 



X. 



Ulric now leads the stranger 
Into their midst when heartily 
With his right hand's vigorous shake 
The father says : "Welcome to me !" 

"To all of lis be welcome 
And as our dear guest stay" — " "Oh Lord !' 
The stranger almost faltering cries, 
" "Is it my Godfrey's voice I heard V"" 

"My father, you a pilgrim, 
A penitent?" Godfrey implores : 
"See on my knees me pardon crave — 
Oh father, take from me thy curse !" 

" "My Godfrey, oh ! By God freed 
Thou'rt from my curse, and by God freed 
Am I, too ! Praise the Lord whose grace 
Is manifest on us, indeed !" " 



97 



" "Almighty God ! Our sins are 
Monstrously great, but greater is 
Thy mercy ! As a penitent 
I've roam'd to find thy heav'uly bliss !" 

" "Amid our fervent praises 
Come to my heart, beloved son ! 
My curse on thee fell back on me, 
And has for thee God's blessing won." ' 

" '*Does not thy loving consort, 
Do not thy rosy children, too. 
Prove, how a father's reckless curse 
As God's own blessing has come true?" 

' ' "My fate may teach j'ou: God will 
Forbear forever and is bent 
To pardon with eternal grace 
The sinner who is penitent." " 

" "God Father ! Oh, we praise thee. 
And jiraise the power of thy hand — 
Into thy keep we offer-up 
Our grateful hearts as pledge to stand." 

" "Almighty, oh ! we praise thee 
And praise thy loving father-heart ! 
Oh ! Let us never from thy ways 
And thy eternal mercy ]tart !" " 



98 



The ri-adle of 1^u^l2iii<rN Royally. 

The North-Wales raih'oad, soon after its bokl dash over 
the rock-bound strait of Menai from the Welsh mainland to 
the island of Anglesea, passes almost wilhin sight of the 
humble village of Penn-Mynidd. The most arduous an- 
tiquarian's perseverance would be defied, his sharpest in- 
vestigations foiled if he would venture to search for visible 
traces of the old "Plas" Penn-Mynidd of the Tudors though 
or, perhaps, because it is the humble cradle of the proudest 
of the many would-be illustrious reigning families of 
Europe. 

The ancient three-or four-storied round-tower, that lor 
centuries rather maguiloqueutly had been styled the Tudor- 
Castle, is gone, was before Owen Tudor's (born about A. D. 
1400) days too far gone already to serve as habitation and 
stronghold for the degenerate scion of a once kingly race. 
Owen's sire or, inay-be, grand-sire already had transferred 
his quarters from the "Castle" to the mansion erected near- 
bj^ in the precincts of his domain. 

This "Plas" or baronial hall— by-the-bye a mere one- 
roomed shanty— if preserved in all its median'al glory — 
would'nt it take leading rank among the Museums of An- 
tiquity and domestic Zoology ? 

In Winter's drear and chilling sway about night-fall, the 
scanty smouldering peat-embers of the hospitable, though 
cbimney-bare hearth revealed the prompt appearance put-in 
by the more manifold than numerous retinue of the Tudor 
domain - its live stock. 

Under the time-honored leadership of a spectre-like 
shaggy grey-horse, a patient cow with its well-bred offspring — 
a playful heifer and its younger sister- deliberately entered 



99 

the hall, followed by a promiscuous flock of goats and sheep, 
aud suiffing at the smoke, momentarily disenchanted the 
l)icturesque still-life of sundry motley heaps of non-descript 
rubbish. 

Kude agricultural implements, neglected and shaky, 
odds and ends of worn-out harness, scanty ruins of de- 
fxinct kitchen-utensils and a few ghastly wrecks of primitive 
furniture made the floor, more than all else, resemble a 
desolate beach after a disastrous storm. 

Presently the sportive goats formed an alley of recep- 
tion and with ambiguous bows welcomed the stately old sow 
that, grunting, looked-up to the rafters of the low roof over 
the hearth where through dense clouds of smoke shone forth 
ample files of slightly coloring hams and flitches of bacon. 
Does the poor old creature, perhaps, recognize her own 
hopeful family in its present elevated state of promising 
metamoriDhosis? Poor dear — hadst thou known the cruel 
fate of mother Niobe and her blooming children, thou 
might'st have looked-down on her with some self-consoling 
commiseration, to see the remains of thy own happy hope- 
fuls, though cruelly slaiighter'd like hers — not like hers left 
a ghastly scare to the awe-stricken beholder and his posterity 
for ages but, like some of Jove's select pets of yore were 
exalted beyc^nd the cloiids as bright stars to cheer the hearts 
of distressed humanity, hung in the smoke to shed comfort 
into the hearts not only, but in due course into the stom- 
achs, too, of a new race of mankind ennobled by the charms 
of utilitarian civilization. 

On the rafters less exposed to the smoke. Chanticleer 
the Great I'oosted in all his glory like the Grand-Seignior 
amidst the motley cluster of plumed gems, the never failing 
treasures of his matrimonial multiplifelicity. 

Beyond the firejilace as a memento of a glorious past 
the rusty portcullis of the deserted round-tower stood lean- 
ing against the wall, surmounting the shaggy vvolf-skin 
couch of the Squire, as a royal coat-of-arms embellishes the 
back of a throne — "Was not a portcullis ever since the chief 
part of the Tudor royal coat of arms'?" 



100 

" "Sure enough, Sir Knight, but wouldn't you grant 
me leave to remove these withered weeds and briars, and 
these scandalous clods of loam? Their wanton lack of dis- 
cretion might reveal to the visiting friar or roaming minstrel 
the shaming fact, that you lately have made bhift of your 
warlike coat-of-arms for a harrow."" 

"Nevermind, mylady, just hand him his casque, and in 
future you better take your boiler to the well instead, since 
j'our last leaky pail from time-honored service has dissolved 
itself into a few sti'aggling hoops and shooks. His ancestral 
helmet ought to adorn the portcullis as approx^riate crest. 
Sword and javelin, bow and quiver may serve as supports." 

""Won't Owen, our darling, stare when he awakes in 
his hutch theie to morrow-morning ! Didn't friar as well as 
minstrel, and good old mother Bridget to boot, at Owen's 
christening all agree in prediction that our Owen once would 
qualify as the grand fiilfilment of Merlin's wonderful loreV"" 

'•Right j'ou are, old girl, for just listen to what they, in 
far-off times to come, are going to hide in obscurity and will 
try to consign to sinister silence. They, then, will pretend 
that it be all bosh, they will brag that their ancestoj-s have 
been Kings before Adam was made. This rosy urchin Owen, 
our darling will be their sire none-the-less and in vain will 
they attempt to stifle the finding of History's Muse. His 
humble worth will ever outshine their assumed pomp." 

— Thus for all we know, may have spoke Owen Tudor's 
father, a poor Welsh knight claiming the famous King 
Cadwalladr as his ancestor, but departing his life of toil and 
privation before Owen, the innocent substratum of his bold- 
est dreams and frequent conjugal confabs like the one just 
overheard, had grown into his first pair of trousers and be- 
gun to explore the wretched wilderness which his mother 
taught him to call his heirloom. 

The shanty-mansion aforesaid was surrounded by scanty 
patches of meadow and copse. They lay like mere sprin- 
kles in a vast desert of shaggy rock-ground, few and far 
between, indeed, too few and far between to bestow even 
the shadow of a pretext for picturesque variety, on the de- 
solate domain, which was reserved for the grand destiny of 



101 

being the easily to be hallow'd though jsersisteiitly disavowed 
nursery of the proudest among the jJioiid races, as a rule, 
of tener graced by than gracing the radiant thrones they were 
elevated to by cruelty and crime — thrones erected and wor- 
shijiped by silly mother Europe's self-deluded children. 

Kankest jealousy could not have accused the Tudor 
estate of being too long or too wide-spread, but in the third 
direction of space it downwards extended to unknown 
depths and upwards as high as the proudest empires, and 
nobody knows how far bej'ond the lonesome jiath of the 
moon, when in her nocturnal wanderings she hajipens to 
skip along over these remarkable grounds with their seem, 
ingly sudden emersions of grotesque rock-boulders from the 
many puddle-like bogs, that in all directions of the horizon 
intersected the surface of this genuine sample of baronial 
freehold. 

Here Owen grew-up under the ever-Avatchfiil eye of his 
widowed mother and acquired the linishing touches of edu- 
cation by his uncle who from a warrior had turned monk 
and employed the young squire for the not much less hon- 
orable than fairly lucrative exhibition of a traditional mock- 
miracle in the neighborhood of their ancestral grounds 
across the Strait. 

The influence and world-wisdom of this uncle, too, 
obtained for young Owen an appointment in Paris as page 
to Princess Catherine (Shakespere's Catherine the Fair) who 
fell in love with him, but under exigencies of her luckless 
father, King Charles VI. of France, after the disastrous 
defeat of Agincourt, was forced into the marriage with 
Henry V. After his much lamented demise, Owen, about 
1426, mariied the Dowager-Queen, his nnforgotten true-love 
Catherine. 

Despite of the ever-mercenary court-party's continued 
slights, Owen henceforward was, during the whole of his 
life, an unwavering staunch supporter of his ill-starred steio- 
son, King Henry VI. and one of the foremost champions in 
the Lancastrian camp during the long and bloody wars 
between the Eed and White Boses. In the encounter of 
Mortimer's Cross taken prisoner by the Earl of March 



102 

(Edward IV. ) lie whs (1461) at Hereford beheaded by the 
Yorkists. 

Owen Tudor was so httle selfish that he never could be 
prevailed on to accept the well deserved honors and digni- 
ties repeatedly offered him by his own stepson, nor any gift 
or even more adeqiiate preferment than the keepership of 
the King's parks at Denbigh. His wife, Queen Catherine 
retired (1436j scarcely 33 years old into Bermondsey Abbey 
and, there, died the year following (1437) whence her 
remains by order of her s'ln, King Henry VI , with due pomp 
were transferred to Westminster Abbey for interment. 

Owen Tndor's and Queen Catherine's three sons 
Edmund, Jasper and Owen (Jr.) were always acknowledged 
as brothers by the King who created Edmund Earl of Rich- 
mond and Jasper Earl of Pembroke. Owen (Jr.) took ecclesi- 
astic orders and died as monk in Westminster-Abbej'. 
Edmund, Earl of Eichmond, married the sole daughter and 
heiress to John, Duke of Somerset, sprung from John of 
Gaunt. Earl of Lancaster, son of King Edward III. 

Edmund Tudor 's (Richmond's) son Henry, soon after 
his accession to the throne in 1485 as King Henry VII., biiilt 
the still much admired exteusion-chaijel to St. Stephen'.s 
Westminster-Cathedral, known as Henry VII. 's Chapel, and 
in commemoration of his ])edigree, and especially of his 
grand-dame, Queen Catherine, had put-ujj the tablet, still in 
existence, with the following inscription: 

"Here lies Queen Katheriue closed in grave, 

The French King's daughter fair; 

And of thy Kingdom Charles the Sixth 

The true undoubted heir, 

The joyful wife, in marriage matched 

To Henry the Fifth by name, 

Becaiise through her he nobleil was 

And shiued in double fame. 

The King of England by descent. 

And by Queen Katheiiiie's light 

The realm of France he did enjoy 

Triumi^hant King of might. 

A hapi)y Queen to Englishmen 



103 



She came right grateful here, 

And tour days space they honored God 

With months and reverent fear. 

Henry (VI.) the Sixth this Queen brought forth 

In painful labour plight ! 

In whose empire a Frenchman was 

And eke an English wight. 

Under no lucky planet born, 

Unto himself no throne, 

But equal to his parents lioth 

In true Eeli.gion ! 

Of Owen Tudor after this 

The next son Edmund was. 

Oh ! Katherine. a renowned Prince 

That did in glory jsass ! 

Henry the Seventh, a British peai'l, 

A gem of England's joy, 

A peerless prince, was Edmund's son, 

A good and glorious Roy. 

Therefore, a happy wife this was, 

A hajipy mother jjure : 

Thrice happy child, but grand-dame she, 

More than thrice happy sure." 



Every single one of all the English sovereigns clniming 
a direct or indirect descent from Owen Tudor, was graced 
bj' some of his sterling qualities. Henry VII. had his keen 
eye and conscientious application to duty : Henry VIII. his 
sportive mood and liberality ; Edward VI. his piety and 
assiduity in studies. Even the "bloody" Ma ly could boast 
of his strong power of will and his unswerving pertinacity. 
Queen Bess was, in every wrinkle of her character, her 
grand-father Henry VII. again, only in a state of higher 
development. Poets might call her an embodied apotheosis, 
mathematicians an involution of high degree of her first 
roval ancestor. 



104 

James I.'s character had been sorely unhinged by dis- 
tressing circiimstances that began before he was born and 
still persecuted him through his childhood and the prime of 
his manhood. The murder of Eizzio had, for once, made a 
Tudor-Stuart a coward, his mother's levity and his tutors' 
and educators' dogmatical fanaticism a pedant, his mother's 
shocking fate and his own brilliant prospects a dissembler 
and mean cynic. 

Poor Charles I. again had many a trait of the noblest 
Tudor characteristics and was. perhaps, less a victim of his 
own, than of his father's follies, one of the indispensable 
atonements of History and Nature. Are not History and 
Nature governed alike by the same eternal liight? Both, 
sooner or later, but always in due time, inexorably visit not 
only some flagrant violations, but even the slightest disre- 
gard of their laws with condign punishment. 

Oliver Cromwell was, assuredly, neither the Demon as 
depicted by Koyalty's flattering flats, nor quite the "honest 
Noll" of some modern whitewashers. He was one of His- 
tory's elect "best liands" none the less, and Britannia would 
hardly have ruled the waves from Cromwell's time to this 
day, if it had not been for his meteorlike career. He, too, 
was of Welsh descent, though not a Tudor. 

His sparkling fame shall not blind us for the milder 
light of another star that rose when he went down. William 
Penn, the founder of our "Keystone State" with its City of 
Brother-love, was another illustrioiis Welshman. If not the 
father of the new country of his selection he, surely, was its 
wise guardian and trusty guide to world-wide superiority. 
William Penn may have been a real near relation of the 
Tudor family. His pedigree hails from the very spot where 
the humble cradle of Owen Tudor was rocked in the Plas 
Perm-Mynidd. 

Charles II. made his ancestor's sportiveness and youth- 
ful levity not only the pleasant boon-companion of his 
young days, but the ghastly pander of his disreputable and 
premature old age. The years of exile passed at the rotting 
French Court had ruined his manhood for life. Does not 
the modern Babel just so to-day hopelessly jjoison the 



II 



105 

life-blood and morals of any young people sent there for 
Fashion's sake, with the germs of rapid consumption and 
irretrievable debasement? 

James II. may at least claim a certain degree of chivalric 
bravery as about the only redeeming trait of his otherwise 
rather shabby character. These two brothers Charles and 
James may have by nature been designed as two healthy 
sprigs of the sound old Tudor trunk. Like their much- 
lamented great-grand-mother Mary Stuart, they had suc- 
cumbed to the deadly contamination of their sojourn in 
Paris. 

William of Oi'ange's grand abilities and undisputable 
merits unmistakably were the happy result of his Tudor 
^ully as nuTch as of his Orange descent. His mother was 
Henrietta, daughter of Charles I., and sister of Charles II. 
and James II. Williams wife, Queen Mary, and her sister 
Queen Aune displayed many of the amiable, few of the 
sterner traits of Tudorian character. 

The Hanoverian (Brunswick or Guelph) branch of the 
Tudor royal family derive their claim to succession in Eng- 
land from the Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James I. as 
• lame ; the Stuarts did deiive theirs from Margareth Tudor, 
Queen to James IV. of Scotland, daughter of Henry VII., 
the first Tudor King, and of the last eighteen Sovereigns of 
the British Isles the only one frankly and even with pride 
avowing that he was the scion of the humble but gallant, 
happy though poor Sir Owen Tudor— M'hose sterling worth 
outshines the dazzling splendor of all his lucky but mostly 
unhappy progeny. 

The first two Georges, again, in character much resem- 
ble their ancestor Henry VII. ; George III., in his political 
stubborness as well as in his exemplary simplicity, humanity 
and kind-hearted honesty had much in common with 
Charles I. and the robust trimk of their race, honest Owen 
Tudor. Had Owen Tudor and Charles I., for no or little fault 
of their's lost their heads on the scaffold, George III. lost 
his head but metaphorically by the same flash of electricity 
that glorified the first days of our national existence and sum- 
moned the fathers of our country and liberty into the ranks 



106 

of Heaven's fiercest Arch-Anfjel, the ready Avenger of Truth 
and Right. 

Poor George ! Most of thy sons— and, forsooth, a nice 
crowd of royal boys of thine the Nation had to provide for 
— contribtited little to thy comfort and caused thee sufficient 
trouble and shame to drive any every-day-father mad. 

George IV. was a mere disgusting carricature of Henry 
VIII. and honest William IV., at best, a kind of second- 
hand William III. 

Victoria the Good, in every way a verier Tudor than any 
one of her royal predecessors, for longer than half a cen- 
tury has graced her sex with every womanly virtue and shed 
a purer and brighter lustre on the most illustrious throne of 
Christendom than all the long line of her ancestors. 

Without exception in History, Monarchs, and England's 
sovereigns especially, have had to borrow ^^hatever light they 
displayed, from the throne they inherited. Queen Victoria's 
lucky siiccessors will inherit a light not borrowed from the 
throne but diffused on it by their beloved Dame. 

The Edward Vll. of future days has ever displayed 
many of his ancestors' noblest virtues. Heaven may grant 
liim the long preservation of his royal mother's days, undis- 
turbed happiness for all near and dear to him, and the full 
compass of manly virtues cherished in the memory of his 
worthy sire Owen Tudor ! 

History's proudest expounders may claim sometimes to 
succeed in sifting some doiibtful probability from a heap of 
would-be scientific chaff. Folk-lore, History's humble hand- 
maid, has always been the reliable preserver of indisputable 
facts and of plain Truth. Thirty or forty years ago m Wales, 
the legend of Owen T^idor's courtship used to be many a 
fire-side hugging grand-mother's pet-story, and surer than 
any romantic stroll into Fiction's fairy-grounds and wonder- 
land, to dispel the gloom of a long winter-night. Now-a. 
days, in all parts of the globe, there is, perhaps, many a 
merchant-prince or man of influence and power whose 
inborn bias for bold adventiires was first kindled into activity 
and final success by the simple strain of some old lay like the 



107 



l.egeiitl of Owen Tudor. 

I. 

Hermit and j'outh, from yonder 
Cell's ivy-bound door-sill, 
"With stern looks gravely gaze at 
The chapel on the hill, 

"Thus doom'd thy holy walls are 
To ruin and decay, 
Because my own young nephew 
Refuses to obey?" 

"As long as I was able 
To represent the Saint, 
We still secur'd a living — 
But now all i^rospects faint." 

"Unless thou'lt practice diving 
And to the eager gaze 
Of lingering crowds perform now 
The miracle's displays." 

And Owen answers: " "Surely, 
I should not shun the game, 
But to deceive poor pilgrims 
Would sting my heart with shame. " " 

"Then will the poor distress'd throng 
Be left without relief, 
And thy poor aging mother's 
Days, too, will close in grief !" 

Thus care-worn quoth the friar — 
Then Owen's loving heart 
Could not withstand his uncle's 
Reproach, just while they part. 



108 



" "No, uncle dear,"" he sooths him, 
" "Yonr will be done— I vow 
With pleasure to attend to 
Your diving lessons now." " 

" "But one thing yon shall promise 
As my reward : I'm bent 
To stndy courtly shape for 
Ball-room and tournament." " 

" "Am I like proudest barons 
Not eke a true-born knight ? 
Though poor my orphan-heirloom — 
I shall maintain my right. " " 

The hermit clasps the boy's hand 
And with a cheering glance 
Shouts : "Hail, thou brave young champion, 
Thoia shalt be sent to France !" 

"But, first of all, learn diving 
And earn the means to know 
Thy poor old mother safe from 
Starvation's claws — then go I" 

" "For mother's sake, dear uncle, 
I willingly agree 
To diving dodges ere I 
To bold adventures flee. " " 

Thus to his gladden'd uncle 
Spoke Owen Tudor, yes, 
He knows that plodding toil is 
The highway to success. 



109 



II. 

Whence come the crowds that gather 
Around the holy well? 
How quick did spread the news of 
The welcome magic spell ? 

It is but quite of late since 
Saint Oswald ever young 
Has recommenc'd appearing 
Where he was miss'd so long. 

To whom out of the water 
St. Oswald shows his face, 
He's sure to find relief from 
Grief, sickness and disgrace. 

Then all who were thus favor'd 
Brought presents to the shrine 
When for St. Oswald's faithful 
Thanksgiving they combine. 

Thus pass'd the summer-season, 
But during Winter's spite 
The sacred jiond was cover'd 
With ice, and all was quiet. 

But then before a cozy 
Grate-fire the friar counts 
Of their accru'd joint earnings 
The fair and square amounts. 

The kind old hermit teaches 
His eager pupil, too, 
Some French and gives of proper 
Deportment him the clue. 



110 



And fencing do they practice 
With broad-sword, foil and lance; 
Though Owen feels most pleased 
In learning how to dance. 

Thns fled yonng Owen Tndor's 
Boyhood in Wales, and high 
Eejoicings felt his mother — 
Thoiigh not without a sigh. 

She sorely fretted nnder 
Their poverty and, oh ! 
That his prond little castle 
To min soon should go. 



III. 

How is it; that no pilgrims 
Flock to the holy well. 
Though mild spring-thaws and sunshine 
Have broken the ice-bound spell V 

Why don't the crowds of cripples 
And invalids appear? 
Say, did perhaps St. Oswald 
Heal all of them last year? 

No— to the holy waters 
Would many a pilgrim come, 
If but the Saint's young features 
Would greet them as whilom. 

St. Oswald vanish 'd- empty, 
Too, stands the hermit's cell, 
For now does Owen i^roud in 
The French King's palace dwell. 



Ill 



He there does serve the princess, 
Young Catherine, as page — 
He does as Saint no longer 
His diving dodges wage. 

Scarcely the fierce young princess 
Had scann'd his gallant air 
She own'd : Is not this bland youth. 
Among the fairest, fair? 

And when but once she took him 
For mate in dance, it faun'd 
Her love to flames she kissVl him 
And patted his dear hand. 

But oft he suffer'd under 
Her haughty temper ; still 
Such humors serve to sweeten 
Her kinder turns of will. 

Whenever she had vexed 
The proud young nobleman, 
Her consolations always 
Did due atonement plan. 

And when her tears are pleading 
To soothe his sullen rage. 
Then Owen thinks : How pleasant 
Is it to be a page ! 

Oh ! Could such pleasiires tarry V 
Alas ! 'T is but too soon 
That Owen's young heart had to 
Forego its sunny boon. 

The King bade his fair daughter 
To marry England's King — 
With their impending parting 
Their joyous loves took wing. • 



112 



And, sobbing, Cafherina 
Assures him ere they part : 
"My duties may lodge elsewhere, 
Bnt thine remains my heart!" 

What tender tears were dewing 
Down on their parting kiss — 
To Wales return'd young Owen 
To mourn his fast-tlowu bliss. 



IV. 

Lo I Did St. Oswald's features 
At last appear again ? 
How long had we jjoor Cx'ipples 
For them to crave in vain ! 

How often have we stagg'ring 
Crept to the holy foi;nt ? 
No one beheld his greetings — 
No poor sick soul grew sound. 

But now, since Irom the waters 
The bless'd displays abound 
As formerly — come ! join us 
Towards Oswald's holy fount ! 

Ye lame ones, on your crutches, 
Come on, and hither crawl, 
Saint Oswald soon will cure you— 
Come here, ye blind ones all ! 

Thus rang the joyful tidings 
Through Wales since Owen stay'd 
At home and from the waters 
Again his face display'd. 



IIH 



At first lie only did it 
At guarded iutervals, 
Kut when less seldom, crowds soon 
Flock to St Oswald's dells. 

And though the shrine bore daily 
I\icL gifts of grateful hearts — 
i'dung Owen still was pining 
From Love's mischievous darts. 

Was not his love entwin'd in 
Tiie mighty King's strong arm? — 
'I'hat she, perhaps, forgotten 
Her page, does cause him harm. 

And nothing is appeasing 
His dark despairing mood ; 
'Round his fair mistress cling fdl 
Dreams of his solitude. 

Thus slow from day to day crept 
The sunny season past, 
Through Nature's brightest changes 
Yduug Owen'.> pinings last. 



V. 

What do the loud rejoicings, 
What do the gay cheers mean 
That do redound from hill-tops 
And from the meadows green V 

Proud England's Queen is coming. 
For once, to visit Wales; 
And old and yoiing folks welcome 
Her there from hills and dales. 



114 



Who plann'fl snch bold adventure-. 
Who dar'd lo counsel her 
To visit her new subjects 
Who scarcely conquer'd were? 

Soon after her first child-birth 
Her King in Death reclin'd. 
So tender love she bore him — 
She wept her bright eyes V)}ind. 

And when all science failed 
To save her sight, some wise 
Old monk conimends the foxintain 
In Wales, to cure her eyes. 

She hardly heard such tidings 
When she with fervent mood 
Vow'd that her court should joumey 
Towards Oswald's solitude. 

The pilgrimage was hasteu'd. 
She soon arrives in Wales, 
And all along the highways 
A joyful nation hails: 

"But lately did us sever 
A bloody war's wild strife — ■ 
Thy coming stills all hatred 
And calls our love to life !" 

And Owen Tudor hearkens 
To these right welcome news. 
Exulting that his mistress 
Such remedy should choose. 

In his grief -stricken bosom 
Dawn'd sudden hojje's bright ray. 
And for the Queen's receptioii 
He smoothed every way. 



115 



He clean'd the old worn-out steps 
Th t led down to the jjond ' 

And l)leach'd the Saint's white robe, now 
For his love to l>e donn'd. 

And having everything thus 
Prepar'd, he's keeping qniet, 
With many a sly glance scanning 
The road by day and night. 



VI. 

"Alas ! Ye trusty Vassals, 
Our gracious Queen is lost !" 
Thus fright'ned shriek'd her lady 
And wild her arms she toss'd. 

"While she, to bathe her eye-lids, 
Down to the water bent, 
She vanish'd from my eye-sight — 
T saw not where she went !" 

Kous'd from their leisure, frantic, 
The Knights run to the pond. 
Closely to r,ike its bottom 
Was no exertion shunn'd. 

But all their pains and labors 
Were fruitless and in vain. 
Back to the camp turns hopeless 
The mourning courtiers' train. 

Owen has, mean-time, brought tt> 
His hermitage his prize, 
His fainted mistress who still 
Seemingly lifeless lies. 



116 



'Faith ! Not in vain he saw her 
Within his holy groves - 
The skilful diver— fearless 
He robs her whom he loves. 

And yet ere she recover'd 
Her senses from the cramp. 
As hermit gravely looking 
He walks towards the c imp. 

When of the dire disaster 
Appris'd, he bold exclaims : 
"This is a blissful miracle, 
A sign of Heaven's aims !" 

"Our Queen abides in Heaven — 
St. Oswald took her there — 
Siich wonder did for ages 
Not happen anywhere !" 

''Yon say ycnir evening-prayers 
And then lay down in peace, 
Yonr Queen enjoys in Heaven's 
High spheres true bliss and ease !" 

"In Heaven she will witness 
Her late King's radiant airs, 
And soon she will return here 
Reliev'd of .ill her cares." 

He spends his benediction 
And turns towards his dark gro\€!. 
So lonesome once, so bright now 
Through his fair Queen's trwe love. 

She soon reclines, awaking, 
Into the fond embrace 
Of her dear page who never 
Lost in her heart his place. 



117 



Love's sweet rewards enligliten'd 
Their gloomy days at last ; 
They hope for future blessings 
And never blame their past. 

Thus, too, they planu'd to-morrow's 
Adventure arm-in-arm, 
With lirosjDects consecrated 
By triTe love's fairest charm. 



VIL 

At last they sank in slumbers, 
And Owen's dream reveals 
His offspring's fate and glory 
From Future's secret seals. 

He saw two wither'd Roses 
Thrown-down, one white, one red. 
With many a bud and many 
A stream of purple shed. 

A youth, his own true image, 
Pick'd-up the last live bud 
Of yonder with'nng red rose 
Out of the pool of blood. 

This youth's kiss chang'd the roseliud 
Into a princess fair, 
And both soon fondled loving 
A boy of true royal air. 

This boy slew some crown'd viper 
That crept through all the gore 
Of yonder roses, and from 
Its head the crown he tore. 



118 



This offspring of the last live 
Red rose-bud kiss'd the last 
Alive white rose-bud changing 
Thus to his Queen her fast. 

Their prince look'd stern and crafty, 
And from an open book 
Shed light that his young sainted 
Son never once forsook. 

But of his two bold daughters 
The second one outshone 
The glories of her father's 
And her successor's throne. 

The next King's noble features 
Dimm'd suddenly away 
And left a cloud of darkness, 
Of horror and dismay. 

Then follow'd his two princes 
And then of bolder mien 
A true-born Queen's royal Consort 
And then another Queen. 

And still five more Kings follow'd, 
Until at last appear'd 
A Queen in radiant glory 
By Virtue's grace endear'd ; 

A Queen as wise as ever 
A loving nation saw, 
A model-wife and-mother : 
England's Victoria. 



119 



VIII. 

"Awake, ye lords and vassals, 
And listen to my lay. 
The wonders which I witness'd 
Have chas'd my cares away." 

"My sight is clear; St. Oswald 
Transported me into 
The heav'nly realms where all the 
Deceaseds' spirits go." 

"What there I saw, no earthly 
Tongue could reveal to you, 
But hear what dear King Henry 
Commanded me to do." 

"When joyful I expected 
To share his heav'nly berth, 
He said : Thou art for these realms 
Not ripe yet, child of Earth !" 

"But to console thee, go to 
St. Oswald's Chapel where 
Thou'lt find another husband. 
In virtues my true peer. " 

"Prepare the celebration, 
Fialfil the Saint's commands 
And in the Chapel witness 
Your Queen's new nuptial bonds." 

Thus bade the Queen, the knights, all 
Deceived by her lay, 
Awe-stricken by the wonder 
Obey'd without delay. 



120 



They form in proud processiou 
Of lords in duty bound 
And of the fairest ladies 
That bloom'd on Albion's ground. 

But fairer than the fairest 
Does Catherina lead 
The wedding-party's onmarch, 
A rosy bride indeed ! 

Her widow's weeds are chang'd now 
For pvirple robe and gem, 
And from her rich ciirls Hashes 
Its rays the diadem. 

Now the procession enters 
The Chapel's open gate; 
Before the altar Owen 
Waits festively array' d. 

The lords are wonder-stricken 
To find a bridegroom there, 
Unknown to all, but surely 
Their true-born, faultless peer. 

He bows and takes the Queen's hand. 
An aged priest does seal 
The bonds, and all the lords do 
In due allegiance kneel. 

When praise and benediction 
Is sung, they rise and their 
Three fervent cheers ring : "Amen ! 
Hail, hail, thou worthy pair !" 



A MEMORABLE FIGHT. 



123 



The sturdy inhabitants of the independent Duchies of 
Slesvic-Holstein had for four hundred years been united 
with the Kingdom of Denmark by personal union only. 
The Danish Government undertook to transform these 
Duchies into Danish provinces and integral parts of the 
Kingdom and provoked the rising of 1848. A provisionary 
Government was instituted, a small army raised and with the 
assistance of German auxiliaries the Danish soldiery soon 
pushed from the territory they occupied as usurpers. 

But the sea-board of the Duchies and the vast extent of 
Germany's north-coast were defenceless and as helpless 
against Denmark's little navy as a bull is against the sting 
of a wasp. And little Denmark knew how to use its sting. 
With half a dozen of fleet frigates and sloops-of-war she 
blockaded the 800 miles of Germany's sea-board and her- 
metically closed the ports of Hamburg and Bremen as well 
as of Stettin find Dantzig and scores of minor sea-ports with 
a flourishing traffic. The east-coast of Slesvic was especially 
exposed, being within hardly a day's sail from the Danish 
naval base and a welcome incitation to renewed invasions. 

This year's 5th of April has been the fortieth anniver- 
sary of a naval battle that hardly has had its et^ual in His- 
tory. Ninety nine men, all told, manning two batteries 
hastily thrown up on a sandy beach, for418poundguns each, 
were at daybreak assaulted by a naval squadron consisting 
of one 84 gun ship of the line, one 4G gun frigate and two 
steam-ships of 8 and 6 guns respectively, conveying three 
unarmed coasting vessels deeply laden with a considerable 
force of land-troops. 

At sim-set the proud line-of -battle ship "Christian the 
Eight" was blown out of existence, the fine frigate "Gefion" 
taken a prize and the two steamers sorely crippled but still 
alile to sneak off with the transport vessels in tow. After 



124 

the loss of hundreds of hauds, 700 officers and men had to 
surrender to the surviving 71 defenders of an almost iude- 
lensible position. The 28 missing comrades of the victorious 
little cohort were not killed diiring the fight, not a soul of 
the trusty fellows having been even hurt at the time of the 
surrender. The gallant 28 men who failed to answer the 
roll-call, lay down their i^recious lives in the heroic attempt 
to save the hundreds of maimed foemen from the gory cock- 
l^it of the burning "Christian the Eight.'" 




In the diagram I and II mark the position of the two 
batteries, E the town-precinct of Eckernforde, B the suburb 
]>orbye, P between the two the inner port, C, C the posi- 
tions of the ship-of-the-line Christian VIII before and after 
the truce; G the position of the frigate Gefion, S, S the two 
war-steam-ships Geiser and Hecliy, C, V the 3 coasting ves- 
sels with land-troops, and SW the Schnellmark Woods 
whence in the latter jjart of the engagement a batteiy of 
field 6 pounders participated in the fight. 

The soiithernmost of the numerous fine bays that indent 
the East-coast of Slesvic is the Frith of Eckernforde. About 
20 miles in width at its moiith and with an average depth of 
more than 7 fathoms of water, clear as crystal, it cuts intcj 
the hilly coast crowned by venerable oak- and beach-forests, 
in west-south-westerly direction to a distance of about 30 
miles, gradually tapering in width to a diameter of about 3 
miles at its semi-circular termination marked by a narrow 



125 

strip of sandy beach with the ancient little seaport-town 
Eckernforde slightly to the northward of its apex. 

The uniform depth of this magnificent sheet of water 
and the easy access of its shores make this bay the very 
point a naval invader would select to disbark the vanguard 
of his landforces. However, the only coast-defences con- 
structed by the newly constituted Provisionary Government 
of Slesvic-Holstein were the two hurriedly thrown up bat- 
teries above alluded to which, though properly constructed, 
lacked the necessary covered connection with a support to 
back them and were, literally spoken, a forelorn position. 

At sun-rise of April the 5th, — the "Maundy Thursday" 
of the year 1849 — the surface of the peaceful bay of Eckern- 
forde was livelj' rijipled by a fine E. N. E. breeze. The 
charming view from the hills at the back of Battery II near 
the south-end of the town was enhanced by the golden hues 
of the rising sun, playing on the wavelets. The look-out 
on the crest of the hills controlled the full length of the bay 
and at that time served as coast-guard station. The sky 
was but slightly sprinkled with downy clouds. 

With the first dawn of morning already the flag-stafi: of 
this point look-out advised the crews of the two batteries of 
two distinct streaks of smoke -in the ofiing of the bay by 
the signal : "Attention, danger." 

Hardly a minute or two after, the bugle-call "all hands" 
roused the brisk bustle of a half-hundred of sprightly young 
fellows within the low earth-walls of each battery, clearing 
their 4 long ISpounders for action. They were no veteran 
soldiers — they had but a few men among them whose mili- 
tary record extended to a year's army-service. Everyone of 
the lads was a volunteer for the defence of their homes ; 
they mostly were sons of wealthy farmers hailing from 
Angeln, the very soil which prouds itself of having been the 
cradle of the Anglo-Saxon race. 

Before sun-rise both batteries were in splendid trim for 
action when, lo ! the dauntless crew of Battery I discovered two 
formidable vessels of war nighing and almost within gun-shot 
range already, heavily surging and onward pressing through 
the peaceful billows of the bay. Presently they come right 



126 

abreast of the little work and begin to show their tull lenghts 
with the grim rows of heavy guns run out unnnizzled and 
the famous blood-red ensign, the battle-flag of a long line of 
havighty pirate-kings waving from bowsprit and gaff. 

Look ! Just now the leading bigger vessel displays a string 
of four small flags from her mizzen-top. Quick boys, stoop- 
down into the safety-pits between the guns-" — Bo— o— cm 
— Crash — "Do not stir just yet, boys"— Boom — Crash — roars 
the frigate's broad-side, too. 

"Quick, man the guns now- not a soul hurt? — Ail-right — 
l)oint well and fire as soon as you are sure of your aim. 
Alas ! But a single one of our little spitfires is left in trim to 
answer their thundering challenge? — The other three dis- 
mounted, completely up-set? — Ply the only piece left, the 
more carefully then to best advantage while we shall try to 
remount its wrecked sisters." 

'•The two big vessels with their courses clewed-up, under 
bare top sails and jib have passed to the westward and ap- 
proach our brothers in Battery II, to smother them with 
their broadsides. — Boom — Hurrah ! Our boys yonder don't 
wait for the enemy to begin the duel. Don't you hear the 
well-known tune of their l8pounders?— Boom— Well done, 
Pete, I see the splinters of the frigate's bulwarks flying. 
Keep steady at it, fire whenever you are sure of your mark. 
Put-up your flag-staff again, Hans, they have upset that too 
— we miist show them that we are not quite done-with yet." 

,, There they haid close, clew-down their topsails and r-r- 
r-r-r — down rattle their anchors. Boom — Now they salute 
oiir brothers yonder with crashing broadsides. Will they, 
too, be cripi»led ? No, thank God :-I see four distinct flashes 
of lightning respond from their green ramjiarts and hark ! 
Our boys return the yells of the enemy with a defiant 
hurrah !" 

,,Havn't you one of the guns in trim again?— Do j'our 
level best, boys, to remount them, piece after piece, lest 
Pete's little roaring sweetheart do not feel like a bride with- 
out bridesmaids. — But doesn't Pete know how to handle her? 
He's her worthy groom, but eke our best man as well — Just 
now he has pepper'd the frigate again — Keep at it, lads, — 



127 

Lead my swift little Tit from the trench, Jack, the poor 
animal stands like stupefied — I must needs run her 'round 
the bay to see how our brothers yonder are getting on. 
Since the vessels have cast anchor they begin to neglect us 
and hurl broadsides after broadsides against the ramparts 
of Battery II. Eemind the enemy that they must not con- 
sider us done with- Ta—ta, lads ! Do your duty fair and 
square — honest weight — with a will for a liberal make-weight. 

Now race along, little nag — we soon shall have cleared 
the North-beach, pass through the village— over the bridge 
into town with its streets all along deserted — out again into 
another rest for you in the snug trench. 

Helloh, boys, all unhurt V The guns all right, too? 
You have the vessels in point-V)lank range, I see — that's a 
treat. Quick, start your forge, move it over to that nook, 
away from the cartridge-tanks. Get up a smart blaze and 
have your shot red-hot before you send them off. 

With their wild broadsides they have .saved us the 
trouble to cut sods for red-hot shot practice. Pile a good 
heap of solid sods between the guns and jjlace there, too, 
extra-pails of water to i)ut in the wads at once, and don't 
waste the water lest our scant siijjply might give out too 
soon. 

8top using full-charge cartridges. A quarter degree 
elevation at your sights with reduced charge will serve as 
well, will enable us to keep up the fire so much longer and 
give our shot a chance to lodge in their timbers. Work the 
bellows with a will, my lad, and report as soon as the shot 
begin to look like the rising sun of this glorious daj^-break. 

— One shot well aglow ! — Now, Fred, let me have a chance 
to handle your gun — Attention ! ^jonge well — cartridge— dry 
wad— sod next — wet wad and another peep for one more aim 
to make sure — lift in the hot iiill — ram home the sparkling 
jewel — stand aside — Boom— Now, friend Hanneman, how do 
you relish such a dose ? 

Beware of haste; act coolly and deliberate! j'^ and never 
ram home yoiir shot till you are sure of your aim. Our 
scant stock of ammunition forbids us to waste a single 
charge. Give the guns an extra-wet sponging after every 



128 

discharge, — One shot every three minutes will give twelve 
minutes to each gun. 

Now keep your time steadily along and never mind the 
loads of iron thej' pour into our ramparts merely to strength- 
en them. The long slope of oiir front must by this time 
have become one solid wall of iron, and whenever thej' point 
their guns a little higher, the storm of whoop-howling shot 
roars past over our heads into the sandhills far behind us. 
Won't our great-grand-children here-abouts still have a 
chance to work a rich iron-mine to sure advantage ? 

Steady, boys, steady — don't waste our precious ammu- 
nition. Whatever forces may have been despatched to our 
support, they cannot replenish our waning stock of powder 
and pills. Our mates on the north-bank— God bless them — 
still are plying but the one piece left standing, but they 
work it well and no mistake ! 

How the time flies in this infernal roar, almost with 
more than gun-shot rapidity. You wouldn't believe our 
dinner-hotu- has gone by for some time. Give your guns 
some longer intervals between shot to cool off, that will give 
you a chance to take an off-hand bite from your knap-sacks 
flavoured by the dense smoke of St. Saltpetre with a taste of 
our mothers' choicest hams and sausages. 

What's that? They have stopped firing — let the smoke 
clear off — I fancj', I see a white flag displayed from the fore- 
topmast-head of either vessel. Eest your guns lest we be 
blamed of flying into the face of universal international 
Law — is it that our little pills begin to work? 

There's a boat nighing— hark ! — That's the regular clang 
of oars — sure, here they come, they are just landing an 
officer and a sailor flying a white flag from a boat-hook — 
they ask for a j^arley ? 

•'Well sir, what's your message?" 

" "The Admiral projjoses an armistice till sun-set — "" 

"To sneak off in the dark, hey?" 

" "No — to tend to our many wounded sailors and give 
you a rest, too." " 

"Armistice cannot be granted. Please retvu-n and haul 
down that white rag with or without your national ensign." 



129 

*• "But the Admiral swore that unless the armistice be 
agreed to, he shouldn't spare the town any longer from a 
bombardment ; instead of wasting the King's ammunition 
on youi jjaltry works, he would shell and burn the town." " 

"The town is an open and peaceful place. Moral as 
well as international Law forbid and will find means to 
avenge such infamy, if j^erpetrated. " 

'"•What does our Admiral care as long as he secures his 
object to effect a landing and dislodge you from these rab- 
bit-holes. The strictures of international Law never bind 
the hand of authoi'ity dealing with rebels who have out- 
lawed themselves." " 

"Not another word ! — Will you accompany me into town 
to consult its citizens about an answer to your message?" 

""AH right!"" 

"Chris, you are from Eckernforde and know the Burgo- 
master's house. Mcfunt my swift little mare and hurry 
thither at full gallop, request him to siammon his council- 
men and all citizens to the market-place. — W^e shall follow, 
sir, on foot if you please— 't is but a ten minutes' walk." 

The market-jjlace is soon reached. From all its approaches 
bewildered citizens rush thither to swell the crowd in 
front of the ancient Town-Hall. The Burgomaster having 
been fully apprised of the enemy's threats addresses the 
crowd and points out in brief that the Admiral in command 
of the vessels intends to shell the town unless the two bat- 
teries be evacuated or, at least, stopped from hampering the 
retreat of his vessels. 

The vast majority of steadfast burghers express their 
feelings by growls of indignation. A few timid voices in 
the crowd ventilate the advice to let the firebrands withdraw 
and end the terrors of the bombardment. A stout little 
fiery alderman tries to silence such cowardly utterances. 
Before a resolution can be passed a motley troop of excited 
women elbow their way into the crowd of assembled burgh- 
ers. "Let them go for our sake? Don't think of it! If 
our boys will do their best to punish the enemy for his das- 
tardly insolence, if our boys will duly uphold the flag of 
tU eir land, — never mind our homes, never mind our lives. 



130 

We shall willingly sacrifice both for the honor and glory of 
our Cause. " 

A deafening hurrah and many a fond embrace was the 
response all around, and a speedy return to the South-Bat- 
tery the immediate sequence of this spontaneous outburst 
of noble enthusiasm. 

"But here, sir, what's that? The two steamers are 
nearing the battle-ground? — Hark ! Don't the vessels begin 
to shorten cable ?- Mark, sir, — if they shall commence to 
move under the fraudulent pretence of the white flag, we 
shall send them our pills and avenge the dastardly attempt 
and cowardly breach of international law." 

"Man the gims, boys. — stand by — work the bellows — 
gun 1, 2, and 3 first round cold shot — gun 4 blank cartridge, 
full charge !" 

The parley.boat has effected its return on board ; the 
line-of-battle-shijj's anchor is almost weighed, the larger of 
the two deft steamers pays out a tow-line to be hauled in on 
board by the big ship. 

"Gun 4, fire '. — Haul down the white flag. Take a sure 
aim at the centre of the steamer's paddle-box for a bull's-eye 
and fire away, as soon as j'ou have made sure of a true 
hit." 

Boom — boom — boom — Weldone, boys, — the steamer has 
been crippled and sneaks off for safety — the big ship is 
drifting toward us. There, boys, she has grounded broad- 
side on and never will get off if you answer her furious 
broadsides with leisurely but steady fire of red-hot shot till 
you see her strike her humbled Dannebrog. 

But mark, over there the frigate in tow of the other 
steamer is fast making good her escape and is almost abreast 
of our North-Battery already, pity 't is — Huzza, boys ! Our 
brothers over there must have hit her tow-line — I see the 
steamer rushing out into the oft'ing and the frigate cut loose 
and helplessly heading the smart breeze drift towards her 
former position. 

And over yonder, to our right, from the Schnellmark 
Woods I hear the report of light field-guns. — Sure, you can 
see the flash of each gvm and the effect of their shot rattling 



131 

through both vessels' rigging.— Now you, boys, keep on 
sending red-hot shot into the big ship's hull and you soon 
will see her ablaze. 

The fury of their roaring bi-oadsides slackens — don't 
you notice a queer change in the smell of the smoke the 
breeze wafts towards usV That's the smell of burning wood 
and oakum. The sun is nearing the crest of the hills behind 
us — They seem to take a long gasp. The smoke of their 
last broadside has cleared off — the big vessel's ensign has 
been struck — the frigate's too ! — Stop firing — Three cheers 
for our Cause and you, Ted, with 27 men hurry into town, 
rouse the fishermen — they won't require it much — I hear 
their cheers — man their boats and make speed to board the 
two fair prizes to take possession. You'll find the stalwart 
boat-builder who didn't shun the raging fire and came twice 
out of town to us and returned to keep i;p the spirits of his 
fellow-townsmen — you'll find him eager to start with his 
good boats and all hands. Let him row two boats over to 
the North-Battery and convey 20 men to the frigate. You 
take charge of the big prize with your men. Not a hand of 
her vanquished crew could be spared for lawless resistance ; 
it will be more than a match for them to keep the fire under. 
In several places it is tonguing out already in flaring sheets 
from her big hull's timbers." 

"Here comes an Orderly from head-quarters, gasping 
for breath. Our Commander-in-chief is speedily approaching 
with his Staff, closely followed by a small flying coluriin of 
mounted troops for our support. While the battle was 
raging not a soul could have expected to reach us over the 
turnpike and its byroads from over the bills. Was not the 
ground all around for miles fully exposed to the clean sweep 
of the enemy's fire? 

Look, boys, Ted has started some boats already. Three 
are fast nearing the big vessel and two our other work. Some 
more are in their "w ake with others to follow. The brave 
fishermen know the two vessels' boats cannot be expected to 
float. 

Now Ted ascends the gangway-ladder. Thank God ! I 
see, he has taken charge of the prize. The Admiral and his 



132 

StafE step down into the boats — shove off— oars -they rovr 
towards us. 

Now I see our boys lead helping down wounded men to 
the boats — sound men who want to crowd down, too, are 
pushed back by our lads and their own officers. 

Here our General (Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg) dis- 
mounts at the beach just m time with his StaJBt" to meet the 
party disbarking from the lirst boat landing. They collect 
the swords of old Admiral Paludan and his downcast Staff. 
Load after load of wounded men is brought ashore, since 
more fishermen have come out of port with their boats to 
the rescue and with alacrity fen-y load after load of panic- 
stricken captives ashore. 

With the Duke's permission the Admiral's Flag-Lieute- 
nant returns on board to expedite the disbarcation and bring 
•off his commander's official papers. Within a few minutes 
after this officer's arrival on board yon see him leap from the 
hind-most lower-deck-port, swim to the southward and dive, 
as suddenly, with a deafening crash and the blinding Hash 
of a thousand simultaneous lightnings the giant mrsts, 
spars and timbers shoot up into the air and dart down again 
to the splashing and sizzing waves of the bay, all ablaze from 
the ghastly flames of the burning wreck. 

More than two hundred of the surrendered vessels' crew 
perished in the explosion. Of our brave 28 comrades on 
board the doomed vessel, too, not one escaped. But the 
memory of their heroic devotion to duty and their self-sacri- 
ficing charity towards vanquished foomen will outlive the 
last of their surviving brothers in arms, will forever form 
one of the brightest pages of History's records. 



People, in their greed for sensation, generally care btit 
little for the "What" constituting a noteworthy fact. They 
mostly center their interest in the '"Who" connected with 
acts and facts, sayings and doings. 

The engagement of April Sth, 1849 fills one of History's 
brightest pages. However, to name only the gallant com- 



133 

mander of the victorious little band whose voice we just 
have listened to, would be desecrating the memory of every 
single participant in this day's glory. 

Every one of the fearless young cannoneers, the stead- 
fast majority of the stalwart burghers of the ancient little 
town threatened with fiendish destruction, their heroic wives 
and daughters even who were ready to sacrifice their homes 
and their lives for the caiise of their Coiintry — they all would 
be entitled to have their names recorded quite as fully as the 
officer in command of the Batteries' crews or the gallant 
young leader of the small band who, rather than forsake 
their helpless conquered foemen, sacrificed their lives in the 
praiseworthy discharge of their duty as brave soldiers and as 
true men. 

The stalwart commander of the two batteries has not 
enjoyed his well-earned fame for many years. He died long 
before father Time succeeded to silver his hair. Still, 
whenever the recollection of that gloiious day awakes, his 
voice above the noise and din of battle cannot but resov;nd 
from heart and tongue of every single one of his surviving 
comrades with a ring of vivid accuracy far surpassing the 
wonders of an Edison's Phonograph. Wax cylinders may 
break to pieces— Man's memory will last forever. 

Whoever cares for names and documentary evidence, 
may refer to Prof. Dr. K. Jansen's "Der Tag und die Manner 
von Eckernforde. " 



135 



I 



On Strikes. 

Man's free will blossoms into disobedience against the 
laws of nature and logic, and brings evil for fruit. All poli- 
tical and social disturbances of the welfare of communities 
are consequence of mostly spontaneous conspiracies against 
the rule of Logic. Erroneous reasoning as often as wlful 
perverseness leads to social calamities. 

Logic teaches that, what is best for a community is best 
for every individual forming part of it. Logic teaches that 
selfishness far deeper hurts him who fosters it, than all his 
fellow-beings whom he fain would prey on. 

All through a long and most eventful life, with frequent 
sudden changes (commonly called "ups and downs") ever 
since the days of my earliest boyhood I have been daily con- 
vinced that the rankest selfishness of almost all individuals 
surrounding me, could not for a minute make me half as 
miserable as they felt. But in a few cases of my young 
days where I thought it to be my duty to retaliate, it gave 
me pain though I always succeeded to see mj^self all-right 
and hold my ground. Still, since I discarded the principle 
of retaliation and never cared about seeing myself righted 
against every single case where I was wronged, I have always 
in due time been avenged much more thoroughly than I ever 
could have avenged myself. 

I have grown old, have been wealthy and poor in turn, 
siTCcessful in business never for myself, for others always, 
ever ready and intent to be usefal to the fellow-beings 
around me— and, for all that, I hardly believe that the para- 
dise yielded Adam a purer bliss than I have found where- 
ever I have been roaming through all the climes of our 



136 

planet— might I not feel justified to say a word or two about 
strikes, these rank blossoms of mutual selfishness? 

Strikes always remind me of the poor boy on the 
skating-pond who was crying when having his hands all but 
frozen, but found consolation in yelling : " Doesn't it serve 
my mother quite right, why didn't she knit me mittens !" 

I fain would draw my fellow-workingman's attention to 
a few facts, and let him take his moral from them himself. 

The average standard of the working-man's wages will 
fix the market-value and price for all the necessaries of life 
and even for a good many of its luxuries. Landlords, bakers 
butchers,grocers,dry-goods-men, etc., particularly the hungry 
middleman, this modernization of the romantic highway- 
man, dont thrive on the custom of the capitalists and 
coupon-cutting members of a would-be aristocracy, but on 
the custom of the working-man. Thus a rise or decline in 
the working-man's average wages will instantly send-up the 
price of all necessaries of life. 

Before the late war the average M'ages for all clas.ses of 
workingmen here in New York were considerably less than 
a Dollar per day. Then, however, every honest and sober 
workingman was able to live at ease and bring-up a family 
in comfort. As a rule, then, the workingman of a few years 
standing either owned a snug little cottage up-town or in the 
suburbs, or held a savingsbank-book with a substantial 
balance to his credit. 

After the outbreak of the rebellion wages soon rose to 
three and four Dollars per day and, for a time, to more than 
that. In 1864 the average workingman was little better than 
poverty-stricken, and ever since, a passing sickness, a wife's 
confinement or even a strike of a few weeks duration puts 
the average workingman to the brink of stal•^'ation not 
because they earn too little but rather because they earned 
too much and became recklessly improvident. At the same 
time that in New York City the workingmen were 
impoverished by the sudden extravagant rise in wages, the 
workingmen in the State of Maine enjoyed all their wonted 
comfort and independence at an unchanged or but slightly 
enlianced rate of wages. 



137 

Tliiiringm in Germany derives mf)st of its supplies froni 
\n- via Hamburg and other seajjorts about SOU miles distant 
Tlie grain for its daily bread is imi^orted from here or Russia 
«nd Egyjit via Hamburg ; live beeves come up there from 
Yutland via Hamburg ; their groceries, their drygoods are 
mostly purveyed by or via Hamburg. The average wages 
for workingmen at Hamburg are from four to five times as 
high as the wages in Thuringia. Still, the thuringian 
workingman lives in comfort aud ease and in pleasant 
fellowshiiJ with his employer, may-be one of the wealthiest 
factory-owners, while tlie Hamburg workingman has to 
tight hard to keep the wolf from his door and crawls in 
iibject servility around the heels of his employer not only, 
but his employer's clerks. In both places they have to fulfil 
and defray about the same duties towards their common 
fatherland. 

In England strikes are almost unheard of in such 
localities where wages are below the average rate but 
periodically i-avage especially the districts where the rate of 
wages is highest. 

Workingmen, do you really think that you would be 
left without a roof over your head, without proper clothing 
.•md am2Jle food for yourselves and for your dear ones, if the 
rate of wages should, within a day's notice, be reduced to 
vue half of its present standard? 

The laws that govern society ix^e nothing but the laws 
iif nature under another point of view. People, whatever 
work they have to perform, should jjay no heed to personal 
interest, should never care about the "who" but merely 
about the "what." Here is the piece of work to be done, 
see to do it as quick, as thoroughly and as cheap as pos.sible, 
and you will but serve your own interests as well as the 
interests of the community withal. 

Workingmen, not a few dozens of millionaires nor the 
sundry classes of upper ten thousands constitute the Nation. 
You, Workingmen, and nobody but you are the Nation. It 
is merely your own fault, if you do not make every do- 
nothing Dives pull his hat for you as his master. It is your 
own fault if you degrade yourselves into boot-licking slavery. 



138 

It ie your own fanlt if they dare to nssnme the airs of T)eing 
yoMT masterfi. 

As long as the hnman race has existed, tyrants have 
never made slaves, but slaves at all times have found or, 
themselves, made their tyrants. Yon, workingmen, can 
sooner do without the mammon of the capital, th.in the 
capital can do without the work of your hands. 

If you want to participate in workingmens'-unions and 
suchlike co-operative efforts to improve your welfare, make 
.it your principal object to bring about a gradual and steady 
reduction of the rate of wages. Whatever you work at, be 
anxious fully to deserve what you earn, be carefxil to spend 
less than you earn, be mindful of getting your task done at 
as little cost, in money and time, as possible. 

The workingman who will act by this rule and loyally 
uphold it as his supreme law, will be perfectly justified to 
consider himself and will l^e considered by everybody else 
the master of his employer, if the hitter should not deserve 
.to be considered his fellow-niau in social e»iuality. 



139 



WiMBLKDON, Surrey, Sept. 1st, 1877. 

Dear Son, you want me to compete for the Thompson 
prize? Have you not, for all your lifetime, every day had 
my lessons taught in sayings and doings, to know how little 
I am able and likely to join in any competition for money 
or fame? That is just what I am and ever have been proud 
of that by natiu'e as well as by an eventful life's education, 
I am utterly devoid of greediness and ambition. Conse- 
yuently my mental powers are in due course deservedly par^ 
alyzed when and wbexever they are piped on deck for the 
shabby sake of material advantages. But to prove before 
you my sincere appreciation of that excellent lady's practical 
patriotism and generous liberality; but to fully realize, nay, 
to double the gratifying sensation of due admiration by its 
exjaression and conimunication; but to show you how intense- 
ly, though far from home, I too have been alarmed by our 
dear Uncle Sam's protracted affliction — but for these motives 
I do not refrain from takiug part in the noble strife, in my 
own way though; that is without leaving the grounds of 
strict privacy by me ever cherished. Thus only to you, 
dear boy, and such friends of yours as know sufficient about 
my maxims and views in geuerul to understand and not to 
misinterprete what perfect strangers at tirst sight probably 
would sneer at as utojiical paradoxa — I address my answer 
to Mrs. Thompson's call. 

"In the beginning was (he word, and the word was with 
God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was 
not anything made (hat was made." This grand key-note 
of St. John's Gospel is, in its concise form, its undisputable 
truth and its wonderfully perfect generality, the true peer 
of our Saviour's "Love thy Master above all and thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." Just as these latter few words encompass 



140 

to the minntest particle all religious and moral command- 
ments that ever were proruulgatecl bj' the wisest of rulers : 
the laws of a Moses no more nor less than the laws of a 
Solon, a Numa or a Con-Fu-Tse, just so, in regard to Philos- 
ophy, St. John's grand key-word is not only the key to his 
Gospel, hut at the same time the only general key to every 
single one of all philosophical systems that ever by the 
wisest of men were or will be conceived and disclosed to 
mankind. 

However diverging and even each other mutually con-> 
tradicting they at first sight may appear in their revelation 
of truth, all philosophical systems may pretend to be road« 
toward truth. 

To the one grand centre Truth clearly is leading a 
selection of roads as inniimerable as the rays of light that 
issue from it. St. John's keyword does not merely lead to 
or along one of these innumerable roads to truth, but covers 
all the ground surrounding truth, and thus obviously covers 
and embraces the whole great variety of genuine philo- 
sophical systems. 

But what is St. John's "Word"? St. John's "Logo.s 
does not require any artificial, tropical or other definition. 
It simply means Legos and nothing but logos : that is the 
ubiquitous and eternal relation between Cause and Effect, 
the eternal Order that rules the Univer^, the neverfailing 
source of the laws of nature that govern not only the world 
of matter or physical world but, likewise, the psychical or 
spirit-world. Contempt or attempted violation of the 
"Logos" have hurled more than one Napoleon from their 
thrones, slain many Caesars and ruined whole nations while 
they were supposed to be on the very highway of prospei-ity 
and power. 

The quack who hits upon the cause of his patients 
disease may succeed to cure him ; fhe most accomplished 
physician who fails to discover the cause of his patient's 
disease and thiis failing to respect the relation between cause 
and effect, fights the symptoms of a case which, for the best 
though occasionally only, are mere effects, but which he is 



141 

but too likely to mistake for the cause — he will most 
jn'obably fail to o\ire and often kill his patient. 

When in due time you will attentivel_y peruse some of 
the most noted and, no doubt numerous noteworthy papei's 
written in answer to Mrs. Thompson's call, always mind to 
sound what you are reading, as to whether its author is 
merely doctoring symptoms, or whether the remedies he 
jjrescribes actually face and are likely to reach the cause. 
Sometimes, however, the symptoms of a case have a close 
and direct relation to the final cause, sometimes they even 
co-incide with it or at least form the visible or discernible 
part of it. 

Thus many of the doctors participating in the general 
consultation summoned to the bed-side of our beloved 
Uncle Sam, will no doiibt jirescribe a wholesome dose of 
Free-Trade, the gradual or radical abolition of protection or, 
at least, a thorough revision of the Tariff. Eight they are. 
Some others, perhaps, sounding a little deeper will point out 
the general morbid tendency of to-day's dec.iyed generation 
to crowd into large cities and prefer the sickening dainties of 
scheming professions and barefaced vice to the honestly 
earned hard crust of the toiling farmer. Right, too, and the 
more right they are. 

Mankind has but one goal: Humanity, and the only rond 
to this one goal we call civilization. All vocations and 
pursuits of men are bypaths leading toward this one highway 
or away from it if people persist to travel in the reversed 
direction. But, for all that, there is but one legitimate 
vocation for man — Agriculture. 

Agriculture is not only the initial starting-^iost on the 
track to civilization, but may be considered the pavement of 
this highway to humanity. 

All other callings, the "soi-disant" learned professions 
(Philosophy, Theology, Law, Medicine, Politics, &c.) parti- 
cularly if made a business of, are in comparison to trade and 
commerce, perhaps, a less barefaced but, just on that 
account, the more pernicious swindle. 

"Oh, Pa!" — I hear you say — "how dare vou call a 



142 

Washington, a Franklin, a Lincoln, a Greeley, a Grinell, a 
Stewart or a Peter Cooper swindlers? !" 

I do not call any man a swindler, my boy, even not a 
risk, a Morrissey or a Tweed. No man is privileged to cast 
a stone at bis brother. You know very well, I cherish the 
friendship of good Biany a really reverend clergyman, 
admirably faithful lawyer, nobly self-sacriticing ijhysician, 
truly wise philosopher or strictly upright politician ; of good 
many an honest merchant or useful manufacturer of sterling 
worth. I, certainly, do not call them nor any of their to me 
unknown fellows in trade or calling swindlers, yet I call 
every one of all their diverse callings a swindle and nothing 
but a swindle. 

A profession that makes it a business and duty, to 
design, plan and scheme how, without falling into the 
meshes of the laws, to acquire as much as possible of your 
neighbor's own ; to gain a living of ease at the expense of 
the communitj' or some private party under pretence of ren- 
dering valuable (!) services meant to cost j'ou as little money 
and exertion as possible -may not we call every such-like 
profession — in however revered or glittering plumage it may 
strut the barn-yard society — a down-right swindle? 

Man's only legitimate calling is Agriculture. The far- 
mer, in reality, is the only producer, all other people are 
consumers, mere parasites. By no means do think it would 
hurt a community's welfare or check the steady progress of 
civilization, if on a certain day the whole gang of these 
drones would strike. They would soon starve, no doubt, 
tho' nobody but themselves. Let all of them turn farmers 
and producers, and lo ! what a mine of wealth, material as 
well as moral would be created. 

The valley of the single river Mississipj^i alone offers 
sufficient arable surface to grant an acre of ground to every 
soul this day breathing on our planet. And an acre of ave- 
rage Mississippi valley soil will, at any time, yield an ample 
sustenance for a creature worth of being styled a member of 
mankind. I never did and I never shall consider him a man 
who only manages to lay hold of his daily bread or even a 



143 

big fortune out of his brother's sweat, and does not know or 
does know but shun to produce it by his own hands' toil. 

I should have considered it an unpardonable neglect if 
I had not given the true finishing stroke to your and your 
three brothers' education by training you for farm-work of 
every descrij^tion. You have had your education as liberally 
bestowed as other boys of well-to-do people, and might have 
had more if you had more cheerfully embraced all opportun- 
ities I offered you. Since you have grown men and had to 
look-out for yourselves, you prefer to earn j^our living in 
town. But even if every one of you should succeed to 
amass the wealth of a Croesus, you never will have the sat- 
isfaction—if satisfaction it were to you— to entice me that I, 
like your mother, should join you and share your town-life. 
Envied husband and father as I am, I ever shall prefer living 
in the country the privation-life of a hermit, even far-away 
from all that is near and dear to my heart, to finy comfort 
and ease and the blooming circle of my own family, if I 
should have to tbank town-life for such amenities. 

And -well I know, there will be a day, and I may l)e 
spared to see it, when one or the other of you boys, too, will 
turn his back to the imaginary advantages and mock-comforts 
of town-life, and like myself, find true felicity and real bless^ 
ings in Nature's sanctuary. Man born from the soil, for his 
preservation and develojiment dejoending on the soil and, in 
fact, only part of the soil he treads, at no stage of civiliza- 
tion is able or justified to sever the natural link a loving All- 
Father has bound him with to the mother-earth. 

Man only can sever these natural ties under penalty of 
crippling body and mind by slavery and disease. Could a 
nation of farmers ever fall victim to a tyrant, or to super- 
stition and enervation ? The destinies of nations and the 
lives of individuals are ruled by the very same laws. The 
calamities of stagnation, prostration and starvation are a 
nation's penalty for flocking into town and swelling the 
flood of swindle-worshippers to a disastrous deluge, and 
for shirking the healthy toil of tilling the soil man was born 
from and for. 

"But is there no remedy against this ever growing evil T' 



144 

you will ask. Well the gouty old epicurean must yield up 
liis port iind bis turtle, or put-up with the gout. All civil- 
ized nations finally will have to disfrauchise every inhabi- 
tant who does not, by tilling his own piece of ground (the 
land he is living on and dying "seized in," as our Saxon 
forefathers most appropriately said) actually produce and 
thus contribute his due share to the national wealth and 
safoty of existence. 

No man should ever have a vote, no man should ever be 
elected or eligible, unless he be a farmer thriving by the toil 
of his own hands. 

Would Washington have become the fatlier of his 
country, if he had not been a farmer? Was it the lawyer 
Lincoln, or the rail-splitting sqvaUer Lincoln, wJio saved the 
Union ? Was it King David— who betrayed Uriah the Hittite, 
or the shepherd-boy David who slew Golinh, that was revered 
as Deliverer of his people? Were King Alfred or King 
Gustaf I. (Vasa) of Sweden, two more liberators of their 
down-trodden cotmtries, anything but farmers? Think of 
Cincinnatus, of Cicero, of Joseph the worthy- son of Maria 
Theresia, of Prince Albert who jealously restricted from 
power and influence, every inch a farmer, did more for the 
domestication and humauization of that uncouth beast, the 
British Lion, than all the long line of proud and crafty 
lulers. 

Was Bismark ever trained fi r anything but farming, 
and was not the gamest of gamblers, Louis Napoleon, for a 
long time the spell-bound prey of the rude farmer Bismark 
even on the slippery ground and at the trumpery green- 
table of Diplomacy? Did not the boor Bismark, beyond 
expectation, realize the millennial dreams of the nation that 
a Charlemagne, a Barbarossa, a Luther and a Frederick the 
"philosopher" if not the "great", failed to arouse and had 
to leave behind as a nation of dreamers? And do you think 
that Bismark even Avhile he was at the elbow of his 
campaigning warrior-King, ever neglected his farm at 
Varzin? President Hayes, Secretary Sherman and every 
member of the public service might do their duty none the 



145 

worse for every one of tbeiii attending to the management 
of a snug little farm, even while in office. 

And however, the neglect of Agriculture and the crowd- 
ing into town is but a symjjtom of the present infirmity of 
all, would be, civilized nations and of the alarming state of 
things in our own great country, once the jiride and hope 
of ailing Humanity; though a symptom in closest relation 
to the real cause, the suicidal rebellion against Idealism and 
blind worship of the golden calf Matter — the contempt of 
Ideals and the worship of Idols. 

Your elder brothers will tell you how closely, ever since 
the restoration of the Union, I have watched the germ of 
the weeds that to-day threaten to smother the noblest croj) 
in civilization's garden ; will tell you that I have been eager 
to imbue you with solid principles, brisk sense for the 
requirements of true manhood and a keen eye for the only 
way to secure worth and happiness. If you heed me you 
cannot fail to realize the causes not only of the misery at 
present intensely felt in the United States, but of the misery 
of all ages. 

Keep your heart free from selfishness and let me refresh 
your recollection by the concluding sentences of one of 
those little heeded lessons that for all your life-time will 
prove you the steady growth but sure maturing, the 
sincerity and unshakable strength of my convictions : 

"Man principally and in first instance always is 
spirit, spirit emanated from the primordial Arch-Spirit dif- 
fused into the innumerable individuals formed of matter but 
gifted with free will and self-consciousness, finally going 
home to the Arch-Spirit and melting into one with Him. 
And though by this plain definition the veiled root of man's 
descent may boldly have been placed into higher and nobler 
regions than the boundaries of monkeydom, truly — ^just as 
little does this definition contend against Darwin's new and 
not less imi^regnable supposition that the substance whereof 
all bodies of individuals belonging to the human race, 
apparently are formed, may welcome as its ancestors the 
Orang-Outan, Gorilla or Chimpanzee. The contest— if anj- 
contest here be— does merely spring from the stiibborn 



146 

partiality and blind fanaticism wherewith the absolute 
Materialism repudiates the existence of the ideal spirit- 
world." 

"Whosoever is not able to see in man something more 
than a beast of higher development or order, may, surely, 
comfort himself with the ready reflex of his monkey-theory 
and, api^earantly, will even succeed to borrow from it many 
a handy point for the proof and illustration of his pi-oblem. 
Who, on the other hand, iipholds the grand Trinity Order, 
Eight and Truth — I even won't say as his God, as supreme 
master, as Creator and Preserver of the Universe -but 
merely as mental conception, and to whomsoever the 
existence of powers and conceptions like activity, virtue, 
liberty, like faith, love and hope is not less conceivable and 
manifest than the existence of his own dear ape-shape, if not 
ape-born, body, or the existence of our mother-earth, yea, 
the whole world as far as it is tangible for our five senses, 
he needs must give himself the lie if he disown the existencis 
of an ideal spirit-world. " 

"Tlie world of matter, subject to incessant change, far 
from being the only truly existent world, is the world that 
is transmutiiting itself and evaporating continuously and, 
just on that account, is in reality the world of merely 
seeming existence, the world of perpetvial decay and 
dissohition, of inevitable death. The ideal world, on the 
other hand, is immutable forever, is of eternal youth and 
life, and just on that account, of absolute existence." 

"And much alike, as the science and knowledge of these 
blind worshippers of Matter, for the best, is mere belief, and 
as the belief and faith of the idealist victoriously bursts the 
cloud-veil of doubt — just so, at closer test and examination, 
Matter discloses itself to thee as mere evanescent and 
meteoric, fleeting vision, while the Ideal Avill reveal itself to 
thee in Truth's full splendor as the eternal ceutral-sun 
creating light and life. " 

"To me Ideal is the absolute. Matter only the imagi- 
nary and seeming Eeality, and as little as Belief and Know- 
ledge, just as little can Idealism and Kealism ever be con- 
trasted. Genuine Realism comprises and embraces with even 



147 

power the sister-spheres of Idealism and Materialism. He, 
onl}', who feels at home and knows to secure his citizenship 
in the realms of either of them— of Idealism and Material- 
ism — he, only, will begin to understand his own nature, and 
acknowledge Order, Right and Truth as the eternal ruling 
power and primordial source of all Being." 

To brother-love alive 

By constant labor thrive. 
Guided by Faith thou'lt know and see, 
Master thyself and thou'lt be free. 

Farewell ! At all times mind to keep your hand at work, 
your head clear, your heart pure, and you will ever be a true 
man, will where-ever you settle, be a welcome neighbor, the 
comfort of your mother and the pride of your father, 

D. D. 



148 



London, Jan. 22d, 1877. 

Dear Madam, the kind lines you added to Mr. H. — 's 
letter of 9th inst. were duly received and with hill satisfaction 
appreciated as best proof of your welcome recovery from the 
trouble that the arrival of Master Francis must have given 
you. But as such young people generally disown all knowl- 
edge of what upsets they create, I plainly see that I have to 
intercede for my dear grandson and hei-ewith, in due form, 
beg to apologize on his liehalf, though it somehow strikes 
me that the yoimg gentleman so far must have behaved 
pretty decently, as neither your nor Mr. H. — 's letter prefer 
any specified charges or even complaints against him. 

Your future letters, I sincerely hope, will always report 
about the dear little fellow's getting-on and deserving lots? 
of praise for his daily increasing appetite, correspondingly 
good night's rests, ruddy appearance, &c. Your as well as 
Mr. H. — 's letters failing to mention him another time in 
any of your future, always much longed for communications, 
would cause me much uneasiness and serious doubts whether 
I ought not unexpectedly come over to take him away 
with me. 

So you better don't wish too fervently for my return to 
America which, by the bye, might create disturbance and 
disappointment in sundry quarters. Your mother-in-law, 
for instance, insists with highly appreciable frankness that 
she feels much happier since there is nobody to bother, to 
overrule and to insult her. 

This may be a lesson to you, as it has been for me, to 
comprehend and perceive that a married lady has but one 
resort to care for, that is, her love towards her husband. A 
lady who loves her husband, will never be bothered, tyran. 



.149 

nized nor insulted by him, even if the brute should fail to 
reciprocate in her love. 

But mark this, and never forget that a lady who does 
not love her husband may be an angel of sweetest temper 
and unquestionable perfection and, nevertheless, is doomed 
and cannot but be bothered, tyrannized and insulted by a 
husband, and even a husband who is an incarnation of 
loving kindness and who loves the poor creature, his 
amiable, sweet-tempered and in every respect perfect, but, 
alas ! lack-love wife more than all creation and more than 
himself. 

Whenever you should be bothered, tyrannized and 
insulted by your husband, don't blame him, but blame your 
own fading love towards him and hurry, with Heaven's own 
God-speed, to rekindle it by cheerful sulimission and a fer- 
vent appeal to his heart for forgiveness. Your unconditional 
surrender will always disperse clouds and squalls, and never 
fail to welcome in all its heavenly lustre and warmth the 
only sun of a married lady's days — her own dear husband's 
love. 

Besides your mother-in-law's disastrous failing to see 
this, it is not a little her own as well as her grown boys' 
improvidence, what prevents my return. It is, indeed, not 
so very long since one of them who but lately had the praise- 
worthy notion to establish, under Love's guidance, a nest of 
his own, serenaded me to the tune of 

"A jolly carouscr and cheery Kill-Blues 
Does frequently want a pair of new shoes," 

another one with his fiddle takes up the accompaniment ; a 
third one with occasional still-born speculations joins as 
chorus; the younger ones hardly can help chiming-in, and 
their restless dame, as leader, beats time with daily discov- 
eries of irrepressibly necessary expenditures and certain 
solemn oaths to break former, more natural, more sacred 
and more binding vows — would'nt there be a fearful break- 
down or smash-iip if ever I should interrupt this serenade 
by a return to my old home and old habits of bidding people 
hold their tongues and calling lovely angels nasty names ? 



150 

No, my dear madam, do not wish for mj- return— you 
really cannot form an idea of what incorrigible and dis- 
graceful a brute has the bare-facad audacity to call himself 

yours with due respect, 

D. D. 



London, July 24th, 1878. 

Dear Son ! Your letter of 1 1th inst. was duly received 
and gives me much jjain. Everything seems to go wrong 
with you and, certainly, not altogether without your own 
fault. My business, likewise, is still awful slack, and the 
disapi^ointment I have to give my young friends, adds to 
my anxiety. But I don't let the worry get the best of me 
although my present circumstances are as bad or worse, you 
may say, than two or three years ago when everything was 
gone to the dogs and I did owe my friend S — just about as 
much as now, on youi" behalf, I owe my young friends. The 
whole calamity over again with the aggravation of my being 
so much older and less fit to weather the storm. And all 
this merely in consequence of your impatience to see me 
and a bit of the Avorld. 

But I don't despair and trust I shall pull through and 
.may be, shall live to see better days or at least a change for 
the better in due time. 

You dont require fifty Pounds to dare and come here 
again. Ten or fifteen Pounds will do. But mind, dont bring 
any of your blessed glittering jirospects along— merely some 
alacrity and sincere eagerness to work at somewhat. 
Whenever everything should go wrong with you in New 
York and you will come here — b\it mind, without your 
prospects^you will be welcome from all my heart, and just 



151 

so Ma and Billy, too, although it may happen that j'ou and 
little Billy as M'ell as myself, shall have to work hard to keep 
our canoe atioat. 

If your senior brothers ever let their mother and brother 
starve, there M-ill be some little peas-pudding for them here 
in London although it is nobody's fault but Mama's that all 
of us are reduced to our present straights. Still, unless she 
will force it out herself by her wonted wanton challenges, I 
shall never reproach her for having blighted and wrecked 
all her husband's and her children's harvests, as well as her 
own haj)piness by her incessantly having conspired with her 
own mother and everj'body else against her husband, yea, 
the kindest and best of husbands. To see the bitter fruits 
of her own doings ripen around her, that is what ails her, 
that is what broke down her health, that is what is her self- 
made hell and the blight of her children's existence. "Why 
could not she be as happy as I am, if she did not know it 
herself? She, surrounded by all our children — strong and 
brave boys all of them — and in possession of all her own as 
well as my earthly property and estate, lives in a constant 
hell, as she herself terms it, and I, bereft of all my children 
and whatever was sacred and dear to me in life, never miss 
the true heaven of heart-ease and unperturbable content. 

That is one of the many cogent reasons I have for not 
writing her, because "tu I'as vonlu comme 9a toi-meme" 
would be the only answer she never fails to provoke. She 
well enough knows there is but one way and but one soul 
on earth to save her from Jierself, but she is too proud to 
own it, and for the mere satisfaction of her vanity and 
egotism prefers to worry herself to death. 

Her answer to the last letter I ever wrote her on occa- 
sion of her birthday last year, i^roved but to plainly the 
truth of my sad conclusions and the utter uselessness of 
entertaining any more hope to see her redeemed from her 
own self. I know I might do what I can to please her, it 
would be the same old game. But rather than see her 
exposed to the ingratitude of her children I would put-up 
with her sad infatuation and let her share in the last crust 
and crumb of my poverty. 



152 

The loss of my books and valuable collections does affect 
me little for my own sake. I have enjoyed all the good 
things long enough and, thank Heaven, to some advantage. 
It is for your sake and your brethren's sake as well us for 
your children's and children's-childi'eu's sake that I lament 
the wanton waste of so much irredeemable treasure. Since 
I could survive the loss of all my children, should I fret for 
the loss of what I laid-up and did my best to preserve for 
them ? 

You are a great deal too heavy-mooded to have success 
in life, nor should you ever be discouraged but rather stimu- 
lated by adversities. 

With your despondency and your lack of energy I never 
should have acquired one tenth part of my knowledge of 
languages and other useful matter. I never should have 
been able to correspond with you in oui- friend Munson's 
blest mode of catching the sound with the eye and instanta- 
neously fix it with the hand. 

Before you rot in despondency, see whether you have 
altogether forgot all your farming and gardening, segar- 
making and other secondary country-life achievements. You 
might teach little Billy, too, that glorious art and I shall give 
you credit for tobacco to any amount. That, perhaps, would 
be better than amateur-printing that you now dally with, 
and pay better too in the long end. 



London, August 21st, 1878. 

My dear son ! Your kind letter of 9th inst. is just at 
hand. Take my best thanks for it and in particular for the 
highly interesting enclosures 

Once for ever, my boy, never say: This is coiTect and 
that is not coiTect. The difference between you and me is 



153 

this: You tliink to see other people's mistakes and never 
tuink of nor see your own, just like your mother who always 
Jinds fault wiih all creation in general .and with her husband 
ill particular but, for God's sake, never with herself. 

Don't yoti see the difference V I have twice as many 
opportunities to gather experience and embrace right and 
truth, and you have almost as little chance to improve your 
qualifications, as your mother has to improve her state from 
misery to happiness, because she scorns to acknowledge her 
ftinlts and repent - the only way to find relief from all 
wretchedness — 



Sept. 3d, 1878. 

Do not despond about the circumstances 

compelling yoii to disappoint me yet awhile. My life was 
made up of disappointments and I can wheather them better 
than most people. Cheer-up, work-on, and when you feel 
lauguinhing refresh yourself by the recollection of sunny 
hours in your past. Give my love to dear little Billy and 
tell him to give you l^ack a full share of it. Farewell ! 



Sept. 7th, 1878. 

My dear son ! In my last letter I forgot to enclose the 
(•o])y of our account which I had i^romised to send you. I 
shall forward it with these lines which will be mailed after I 
shall have received your next communication. I hope it may 



154 

be a phonograi^hic one again and contain good news in every 
respect, especially reassuring me of your being in fine spir- 
its, at least better si)irits than your last letters did breathe. 

As long as I have something to study or some other 
work — the harder the better~Iam always in excellent spirits, 
and at your age a man has as much knowledge to gather as 
should prevent him from ever losing his spirits. Despondency 
at your age is a sure sign of indolence, that is lack of proper 
activitj" and interest for the great many things which now-a- 
days a man requires information on that, by study only, can 
be acquired. It is the study of useful and scientific matter 
that keeps you in buoyant spirits and renders your con- 
versation charming and even fascinating for everybody and 
thus, more than anything else, will help you to get on in the 
world. 

The reading of novels, for instance, even of the best 
standard works of fiction, assuredly, will make the brightest 
young fellow dull and dreary, a perfect bore his conversa- 
tion second-handed, stale and disgusting and, therefore, 
himself soon a plague to others as much as to himself. 
Don't you think, a hard-working stinking nigger would be 
better company than such a bloat and therefore, indeed, 
wotild have a better chance to get on in the world, too, a 
thousandfold better cViance than all the scented young 
dudes, blase bores and would-be novel-heroes? 

Work hard, my boy, with brain and hand - not for the 
sake of money, but for the sake of keeping your spirits 
buoyant and preserving the health of body and mind. For 
say, what is money but dross? The dollar you pocket, 
somebody else must miss, and the fortune some people wal- 
low in, renders perhaps thousands of fellow-creatures mis- 
erable and helplessly beggared. Money cannot multiply 
like work, for instance, that always will have its sweet fruit 
and a manifold harvest either for the worker himself, or his 
fellow-creatures. 

The greater wonders still reveal themselves with true 
divine splendor if, in this respect, we compare the power of 
money in society as well as for mankind in general, with the 
power of love and its wonderful superhuman nature which 



155 

always secures to its seeds a thousandfold crop, yea, a har- 
vest of never countable multiplicity. 

The dollar you hand over to somebody, diminishes your 
own power of purchase exactly as much as it increases his. 
The love you bestow, will enrich you in every respect — will 
enrich giver and receiver (why not lover and lovee) alike— it 
it do not, you may rest assured, it is not love what you give. 

The chiklren of Jack-an-Apes, these millions of misera- 
ble worshipjjers of moneydom and monkeydom, call love 
merely (he state of demoniac wretchedness which inevitably 
follows whenever the animal, or as the clergy say the devil, 
but in reality only Darwin's monkey has got the best of the 
God in man —the poor frail vessel man — and has thrown his 
God, its good old pilot helter-skelter over board. 

Splash ! The good old pilot is gone — oh, dear me, not 
he ! He has got accustomed to such treatment long ago. He 
outswims torpedo and dolphin and soon gambols aboard 
.some other frail craft that has nothing but a cast-away mon- 
key on deck who has been longing for the i^ilot to get aboard 
and make him a man. For he was aware of his monkeyhood 
and thus eagerly had prepared a hearty welcome for the 
pilot. 

The other monkey who had ridded himself of his pilot, 
turned pirate, murdered, robbed, stole and amassed heaps 
and heaps of money, although he lavished without restraint 
large sums on sweatmeats and wine, on Havana Cigars and 
foppish toggery, on fancy horses and she-monkeys. At last 
he died, lay in state, had a grand funeral and all his riches 
fell a prey to other monkeys. He, of course, had a glorifying 
necrologue, too, in all the dailies, weeklies and monthlies, 
and in them it is stated that he never was married though 
several times hopelessly love-sick. 

"Love-sick" — oh ! Rank debauchery of speech. It is a 
genuine yell of the monkey-language. Love, thou true pan- 
acea of all sickness, how art thou blasphemed by the infa- 
mous monkey-bred dirt that has wantonly forfeited every 
claim to the holiest heirloom of mankind, mercifully granted 
by an all-loving father ! 

How blest are you two boys, little Wil- 



15€ 

liain and you, to have s\ich a father! I could almost 
begrudge you your father, if I could not ever cherish the 
memory of a loving father and the record of a long line of 
worthy ancestors guiding my steps — if I had not you two 
loving boys to make me even with you. Good-night, you 
two, God bless you ! 



Sept. 13th, 1878. 

Dear Son ! That I want you to wake-up is, indeed, not 
on account of my troubles an,d bother — I know how to fight 
the devil— it is for your own sake, that I want you to wake- 
up and be a man. All my letters, especially the last one, 
must prove you that much. A long one that I wrote jou. 
several days ago, would prove it still more clearly. I cannot 
send it with this because I have not ^-ot it with me and do 
not regret the delay; you don't deserve such a one in reply 
of youi- communications of Aug. 27th and 29th. Indeed, sir, 
you don't deserve that letter, not to-day, but I hope you may 
deserve and have it soon. 

You are ashamed of yourself ! There would be no harm 
in that— biit to make me ashamed of you, that is too bad ! 
The belief in fate makes you the sure victim of fate, just as 
the belief in danger makes j'ou a victim of danger, that is a 
coward and ready prey ; just as the belief in any other 
humbug— your Fate and Danger are nothing but arch-, 
humbugs — makes you the victim of that humbug, a con- 
temptible, silly dupe. 

Fate, danger, humbug in all its checkered kind and the; 
whole lot of similar imaginary spooks and superstitions, 
halluccinations of an unsound, sicklj', half-developed or 
self-neglected brain, are all nothing but the devil and arch- 
deceiver in different disguises. 



157 

There are but two sviperhuman powers man has to deal 
with : God and the Devil. God must be awed and sought, 
the Devil must be fought. 

Thus the specter Fate that haunts you, must be fought, 
for it is onlj' the Devil in disguise. I thought for all the 
lessons taught you not only by me, biat by that true and 
wholesome Fate which is the chain of events in the life of 
man, that powerful and wonderfully beneticient bridle of the 
Holy Ghost by which he leads the gone-astray, bolting foals 
(don't read fools) of life's gay race-course to the right goal, 
the home of their heavenly master — did you altogether forget 
your "There is a God" Ac? — I thought, for all this, you 
ought to have known better than to talk such rubbish about 
fate as you have been venting in your last letter. 

If a little girl of 3 or 4 years of age or some silly old 
"Waschweib" would talk such stufE, I would not put-up 
with it — but if a boy - for a man cannot be called he who 
does it — talks such rubbish, let me kick him into pulp, let 
me pound and grind his fate to a powder, in hopes that I 
may succeed to mould the pulp aud thus transform the boy 
into a man, as well as his specter fate into a rock of Faith. 
Is not sound, solid faith better than your muddy imaginary 
fate? 

"Spiele nicht mit Schiessgewehr, mein Sohn, denn es 
fiihlt, wie Du, den Schmerz" — Dont you know this di-oll 
compound of two line old German "Sprichworter" ? — Never 
again attempt to argue in matters of logic, before you have 
mastered your ABC's. I shall kick you to a jelly and trans- 
form you into a man without such disgusting provocations 
from your side. 

Your fatherly advice about my dealings with my young 
friends, the leather-dressers, is another nice specimen of your 
logic. You know and have been told repeatedly, that they 
have not the means to pay a book-keeper, and you advise 
me to charge them for my little troublesome services a sum 
that would secure, here in London, half a dozen of book- 
keepers. What would be the benefit of charging them who 
have not got the money to satisfy your charges. If I would 
charge them anything I should get nothing by so doing, and 



158 

probably should lose the pittance which, in consequence of 
Your fonlishness, at present I cannot afford to refuse. At 
present more than ever, I need this little emolument. For 
lately I have often been reduced to a few pence and still felt 
as happy as a king in the consciousness that it was for the 
sake of my dear boy that I was in that state of destitution. 
But what especially makes me so happy, is that I fight 
the Devil and conquer him too. It is devilish, nay indeed, 
it is rather divine fun to fight the Devil and ccmquer his 
infernal Satanic Majesty. What will become of little William 
if you dont try to be a man ? 



Sept. 20th, 1878, 

Don't you grumble that, in my last letter, I have not 
given you as explicit an account about the fate of the other 
seafaring rover's afterlife as I gave you about the doings and 
end of the pirate-monkey who had thrown his pilot over- 
board. Don't you griimble, presently you shall have it, my 
boy. 

That the distressed mariner gave the good old pilot a 
hearty welcorue and bully reception, I need hardly say. You 
will not doubt that he made a strong cup of coffee, perhaps 
a stiff glass of grog, too, and did, surely , all he could to 
make the jolly old sea-dog comfortable. 

Instantly with his coming on board, the hurricanelike 
tempest that had been raging, abated ; the wild foaming and 
tremendously breaking sea had gone down, all troubles had 
given way to the jjeace of a holiday. So it continued without 
interi'uption. They roamed over the gentle ocean and 
enjoyed each other's company highly without any object 
whatever in view. They fully satisfied each other ; they had 
many an opportunity to direct stray sailors whom they met, 
how to gain their destination, but hardly ever thought of 



159 

entering a port themselves ; indeed, it was qiiite per 
adventure that, some fine day, their vessel ran foul of the 
hidden shoals in the romantic and picturesque, but fearfully 
deceitful harbor of Matrimony — or isitmadrimony— in most 
cases, I am afraid, the "d" would come nearer the mark, nor 
is it to be wondered at, that part of the word sounds like 
"money", for money, indeed, is generally suspected to have 
something to do with it. 

However, our stranded sailor paid willingly with punct- 
ual liberality the customary salvage dues consisting, as the 
word "customary" wistfully seems to hint on, in the custom 
to marr3^ 

I never found out whether it is anything but mere 
accident that the she-monkey's who pretend that this duty 
which they call "marry" was instituted merely for the pur- 
pose to provide for the fulfilment of all their whims, how- 
ever monkeylike they be, have a decided predilection to 
sport the name Mary or Maria or Marie (to make people 
believe they had not quite forgot yet their jiittance of board- 
ing-school French) though jolly He-Monkeys like to call 
them Poll or Polly, perhaps on account of their decided 
propensity and wonderful facility to chatter as if they were 
not monkeys but jiarrots or half one and half the other. 

The poor old pilot got the worst of it. But was not it 
his fault that our sailor got into that deuced fix of a scrape, 
or whatever else you may choo«e to call it? Why was he 
asleep at the critical moment when they were nearing the 
dangers of these dehisive shoals? 

The sailor ashore still kept-up most intimate terms with 
him, but it was not as it used to be. The smart she-monkey 
did all she could, to make it hot for them. 

When she scorned or insulted the dear old man, our sai- 
lor felt all the more bound to cheer him up by some genuine 
larks. If she wanted to make the pilot black the boots for 
the whole ship's crew, the sailor drove him off in a carriage 
and four to some spree; if she slighted her husband's better 
self and soon feigned to take no notice of his presence, even 
when-and whereever it was plain and obvious that he was 
her liege lord's sole true guide and support — our sailor made 



160 

up for it by Imaging his company closer than ever and by 
seemingly curing for nothing but him. 

Let me make it, short. The she-monkey had her revenge. 
They soon had quite a large family, a lot of tine boys, and 
she did her best to ruin every one of them, whether with 
perfect success, I never was told nor even could ascertain. 
But she had powerful allies not only in the natural propensi- 
ties and crotchets which the boys had inherited from her, 
not only in the prejudices and superstitions that all flesh is 
heir to, but principally in the crowds of monkey-pups sur- 
rounding them and in the glittering plunder that a few of 
them could make a show of. 

Novels with pirate-monkeys for heroes and utterly utter 
she-monkeys for heroines may have had their sway to poi- 
son the young ones' undeveloped mind and to m.ail it against 
all preaching and teaching of their father and his dear old 
friend. The poor boys ! What pets could and would they 
have been with both of them ! 

As they grew-up and approached the age of manhood, 
there was more than ample probability that they would be 
ready tools and willing helpmates in their mother's foul 
designs, and now, you better look-out shai-p, Mr. Sailor, 
with your fool of old jiilot to-boot ! 

The old pilot?- Three times three cheers and a bottle, 
nay nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and 
ninety nine hogsheads of Olympic nectar for the jolly old Tar! 
In strict secrecy and closest retirement he made a splendid 
balloon, just big enough for two, and when it was done — 
off they went. Sailor and Pilot, without luggage, without 
provisions and victuals, without ballast, with nothing but 
irrepressible buoyancy. They flew straight up to the third 
heaven — by.the-bye the pilot's birth-place and home— and 
the dear old chap treated his chum every night to a penn- 
orth of peas-pndding and all the rest of real good things. 

And now, my boy, choose between the fate of the pir- 
ate-monkey and the faith of the sailor ! 

And the fate of the pirate-monkey is exceptional for all 
that. To one successful pirate-monkey there are always 
hundred-thousands of would-be pirate-monkeys who share 



161 

nothing of his fate but his dung-hill. I leave it to you to 
picture such a would-be pirate-monkey's feeling and fate ; 
you have had a taste of it and can describe it better than I 
could from mere observation and the perusal of your 



Oct. 6th, 1878. 

Dear son! Have my last letters still left you the miserable 
victim of your fatalism ? Fatalism is the superstitious belief 
in a fate that is nothing but chance. Don't you say ; "Is not 
there such a thing as chance in the world, why then could 
old man Webster give us a nice definition, j'ou might say, a 
verbal photography of the thing?"— Don't you say : "1 admit 
that you from our earliest childhood alwaj^s have tried to 
persuade us that there was not such a thing as chance, but 
did not you say yourself that he who only believes in chance 
and would worship chance as his God, must inexorably fall 
a victim to his own god Chance? How can that be true and 
dangerous if chance were not a something, yea, a powerful 
reality? Would Webster have been able to define the word, 
would he have given it so much as a place in his Dictionary 
if it was a mere nothing?" 

Oho, my boy, what is nothing ? — "Nothing is nothing", 
you answer. But don't you die of starvation if you venture 
to eat this powerfuUest destroyer "nothing"? Something 
may do harm, but nothing will and must do harm for sure. 

It is man's bounden duty to turn the somethings of life 
to account and best advantage, not only for his own 
hapiiiness, but for the happiness of his neighbor, that is "all 
present and future generations' ', and to conquer the nothings 
which are the creations of the devil, the great negating arch- 
power. 

By-the-bye, there is no bigger fun in the world than the 
constant fight with the devil. For if you fight him, you are 



162 

sure to conquer him, and if yon don't conquer him, yon 
render sure proof that you don't fight him. The two never 
failing weapons for this fight are the sword called "Work" 
and the shield called "Faith." 

Is it anything but proper and right that he who dis- 
regards, neglects or wastes the somethings of life which are 
the blessings of the loving All-Father, should fall into tlie 
Devil's clutches, a ready victim to his glittering nothings, 
and finally become his everlasting slave? 

I am very glad about your lots of disappointments that 
have made you so miseralily wretched ever since you left iiic, 
although I have suffered more than you \inder the f emi)orary 
inconveniences I'aised by your foolish actions. As it is, yon 
have a well deserved foretaste of hell's pangs, because you 
worshipped the glittering nothing "matter" and live still in 
the agonies of fear lest Fate or some other bugbear which, 
likewise, is a mere selfmade specter or fabrication of your 
feverish brain, might snap the enticing idol matter, this 
nothing which you piirsue so hotly, from your grasp and 
even devour yo\i from toj^ to toe. 

And now, look-up or down, whichever will suit yovi 
better, on me ; if your vanity otherwise would jarevent you 
from looking at all, yoii are quite welcome to look down on 
your father — and you will see me as hjipj^y as ever deriving 
inexhaustible delight from the same source your pangs 
spring from- — from the devil. That is you dread him and 
nibbling his bait carry his chains, while I prefer to tight him 
every day of my life and always have the highly gratifying 
satisfaction to rout him completely in whatever disguise he 
may try to get the best of me. 

Yes, endless are his disguises, and is not your tantalizing 
bugbear "fate" one of them? Every line of my lute letters 
must have given you the impression, yea, ample proof of 
the real and perfect happiness which I enjoy and which 
thousandfold indemnifies me for all the troubles your 
foolishness has brought-on, over nie rather thicker than over 
yourself. If my hapjiiness could Ije intensified, it would be 
by the hope that Fate — not your spook-fate, but my "Fate" 
or rather the only actual fate, the fate wherewith the Holy 



103 

Ghost never fails to guide us towards truth — may lead yon 
thither and briu'^ about what all my preaching and teaching 
has failed to convince you of as the one thing rei^uired before 
all other things. 

Prospects, " 'Aussichten, Luftschlosser ," our dutch uncle 
calls them, are one of the devil's pet-arrays, are one side-, 
you may say, are the first side of your specter-fate — misery 
is the other. Without i^rospects or misery you never would 
have come over here to see me. Love alone could not have 
sent you across the ocean's beamless billows. True love 
does not know of space or time. If you were as much with 
me in London, as I am always with you in New York, you 
never could have missed me, your love would not be affected 
or changed, neither by absence, nor even by death. With 
true filial love alone you would not have required to be in 
bodily presence with me. Mere affection is hardly strong 
enough to drive peojjle over mountains and seas, unless it 
find an ally in prospects of some kind. 

Yoii contended yourself at the time of your visit that 
you would not have come if it had not been for the excellent 

prospects dawning all around your horizon. While here 

all these elegant prospects, one by one, faded-away. They 
were only the first side of the fate that you now accuse of 
having been against you ever since you returned to New 
York. If it had not been for your precious prospects, you 
know that very well yourself, you might have laid a sound 
foundation to real prosperity and, perhaps, lasting compan- 
ionship with me. Still I am content you did not, because 
all my preaching and teaching never woiild have made you 
a man. 

Have not you had my "There is a God" in English and 
German V Have not you had quite a number of remarkably 
instructive letters for several years now that I never could 
make you copy for little William's future guidance, nor even 
C'luld make you read for your own? And you have the 
cheek to pretend that you ever wanted to have me near? 
You cannot have me nearer than by reading my letters and 
heeding my lessons and way-marks. Have not you had my 
example, your education, our farm-life and the experience 



164 

of my many failings and few siiccesses in life? If all this 
had made you a man, you would not have worshipped Fate 
under the flattering name of prospects, merely to fall victim 
to the same fate that now you curse, though it is nothing 
but your precious prospects turned sour, rank and nasty. 

Work, my boy, work hard and turn your back on pros- 
pects ! Then you will not fail to embrace the Fate of every 
triie man — the only actu.al Fate held out to man by the lov- 
iTig All-Father, which fate is the Kingdom of God, happiness 
even in direst distress, happiness in Love, Faith and Hope, 

Was it yoiir specter-fate or Faith that empowered Peter 
to walk on the waves to meet his Master? As soon as he 
gave up his faith for the specter fate — down he went. But 
the divine love of his Lord and Saviour stretched forth the 
hand of help and revived Peter's faith — Peter was saved. 

Let monkeys call t bis "all bosh," my boy; I hope yon 
may open your eyes to Truth and your heart to Faith and 
Love, and you will for all your life be as rich in poverty and 
as happy in trouble as your father 



Oct. 19th, 1878. 

Yes, my son, you treat me almost as bad as most people 
treat their heavenly father whom they most persistently 
avoid to appeal to when they most need him. How could I, 
then, claim the right to complain. If the countless millions 
of ingrates never could shake Him out of his eternal beati- 
tude and bliss, your neglect certainly shall not upset me, 
and most assuredly you would meet with the well-deserved 
coiinter-neglect, if it were not for your own sake that I still 
try to keep the almost extinct spark of hope to see you rise 
into manhood, alive with the oil of i^aternal love that you 
did not quite succeed yet to exhaust by carelessly spilling 
into the smoky embers of your superstition and the clouds 



:H J, 



165 

of dusty cobwebs your lack of energy and, in natural 
sequence, your indolence and despondency befog you with. 

But, my son, I have done preaching now. What you 
have had of it, was or, at least, ought to be more than suffi- 
cient to ciire whole generations of foot- and brain-sore maraud- 
ers on the winding highway of life — sufficient to knock- 
down five hundred thousand devils and their grandmother 
to-boot. 

Yes, my boy, the highway of life is not winding only 
but of wonderfully varying nature, too — there is the post- 
man's knock and, perhaps, a letter from yoia — yes, your let- 
ter of 7th inst. is at hand. I leave the highway of life and 
turn to your letter on a new sheet. 



iiu; 



Caiiipsiigrii - Hoiigr. 



Flip-flap, j'oung chap ! 

Don't tany, but rajj 
With ringing cheer the crop that is sjjreacl 

From door to door 

On the threshing floor 
Of this btisy life's short work-day ere it's tied. 

Flip-flap, thy flail 

May never fail 
To rap on all that 's mad or bad. 

Don't fear lest ye crack 

Sound grain nor the back 
Of the Ijrave, ever jolly, honest, manly young lad. 

Flip-flap, let fly 

And never be shy 
To thresh while stepping life's line along : 

There's but one way 

To redeem, I say, 
The grain from the chafi' and the right from the wrong. 

Flip-flap ! With a rap 

For the tempter's trap, 
For the trickster's cob-web and the sneaky sniffer's snare 

Flip-flap, thresh away ! 

At close of the day 
You're to winnow golden grain for your well-earu'd shai'e. 



167 

Flip-flai) ! 'T may bap, 
You'll deal a stunning rap 
On tlie shabby money-inonkey and office-grabbing crab, 
Or a spoil-soil'd crazy Eep. 
With a Bhiine-chilled — (beg pardon) — chill- 
blain'd step 
Or a Hill-Vjlam'd, swill-brain'd, still-stain'd, Snn-sfnu-li 

Demi-Crab. 

Flip-flap ! Here's a slap 

For the good-for-nothing snap 
■Who would St 31 his Country's weal for his own benefit 

Or his party's dirty rags 

Or the boodler's money-bags 
Or whatever bait is offer'd by some shuffling hj^inicrits 

Flip-flap I Pull the wrap 

From the shoulders of the chap 
Who dissembles his foul schemes with a feather in his cap. 

There's a world-wide gap 

'Twixt an office-hunter's snap 
And a Washington's devotit)n or a naj) in old Abe's lap. 



168 



EPITAPH. 



To you he was a riddle ? You never saw him fret, 
You never saw him revel, but ever blithesome yet. 

He never was despairing, but always full of hope ; 
His energy when wanted, compass'd the widest scope. 

Afraid he was of nothing. Toil, hardship, danger, death 
With even cheer he welcom'd. Who saw him lose his breath ? 

Where everyone did falter, we saw him stand erect ; 
What anyone coiild alter, he would try to perfect. 

His heart was fiall of kindness, of spite and envy l)are, 
He coiald not hate and ever would deem revenge unfair. 

His eye, a ready min-or, reflected every pure 
And innocent rejoicing and every grief as sure ; 

The only tear that ever would moisten it, was due 
To pity and compassion or bland emotion, too. 

His hand was ever open to grasp a brother-hand 
And drag a sinking swimmer through breakers safe to land. 

Who was the funny fellow? His name was soon forgot, 
Of his last home nobody will ever show the spot. 

Oh ! Don't disgrace his grave, pray, by monument or fence. 
Nor marble slab ; he never shamm'd worldly opulen(!e. 

But of the flowery meadow that once his light foot trod. 
Select for his last homestead the daisy-spangled sod. — 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

lllillillllllllllilllil 

016 115 805 7 




